All About Muppets

Ron Wagner is a Canadian puppeteer, clown, and the ex-husband of Cheryl Wagner. He served as an additional Muppet performer on Follow That Bird and the original Fraggle Rock episode "The Thirty Minute Work Week", both with his then-wife. In the early 1970s, Ron and Cheryl formed the puppet theatre company known as the P.E.I. Puppet People, based in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Later in 1977, the Wagner couple formed the Merrytime Clown and Puppet Company, a theater company that mixes puppets, clowning, and street theater. There have been rumors saying that the company served as the inspiration to the creation process of The Big Comfy Couch. Going solo, he designed the puppets for a CBC children's series called Bixby and Me, as well as performing a clown puppet named Charlie freelance. It would appear that Ron Wagner's then-wife has way more credits than he does since she did many shows and worked at Radical Sheep Productions. During his time on Fraggle Rock and Follo...

Travis Frost is a German puppeteer who has served as an occasional Muppet performer on the German co-production of Sesame Street, Sesamstrasse since 2011. For the show and its related media, he played various minor characters, did additional right-handing, and occasionally performed Cookie Monster and Elmo. During the 40th anniversary, Travis co-developed and taught a puppetry workshop for children, touring Germany from 2012-2013. It would appear that Frost is more than an occasional assistant on the show and its related media since he played Cookie Monster in a behind the scenes documentary and the 40th anniversary episode. Not much is known about this performer outside of Sesamstrasse, at least not yet. Apparently, this puppeteer is mostly recognized for doing the show and its related media like Eine Mohre fur Zwei for example. But I wonder how Travis Frost learned to speak German since he is from Salt Lake City, Utah before moving to Germany to perform on Sesamstrasse. He probably t...

Chris Ostwald is a British mechanical designer who served as one of the cable control puppeteers in the Creature Shop film Dreamchild. Other cable control operators he worked with in that film include Cas Willing, Mike Osborn, Sadie Corre, and Chris Eveleigh, to name a few. Chris also got to meet legendary puppeteers while working on that film, most notably Steve Whitmire and Karen Prell. Ostwald should have done more projects with the Creature Shop as either puppeteer or mechanical designer like within Labyrinth or The Witches. Outside, his only known film credits were Return to Oz and Little Shop of Horrors as a chief mechanical designer for both. Nobody seems to know whatever happened to him way after the 1980s where he did all three films mentioned above. Chris Ostwald doesn't even have a proper bio of himself anywhere online, at least not yet. Maybe this photo is his self-portrait, but you can never be too sure if it is. At least he got to work on one Creature Shop film while ...

Annett Mateo is a puppeteer, puppet designer, and builder who is best known for making different kinds of puppets out of lots of different materials for over 20 years. As a professional, she designed and built Muppet-type puppets, full-body costumes, marionettes, table-top, shadow, and more. Annett also made custom puppets for people, theatres, and companies seen in many forms of entertainment worldwide, like parades for example. Mateo also performed as a member of a puppet improv troupe called Cotton Gin at Unexpected Productions, sort of similar to Henson Alternative's Puppet Up. Even though she did not perform with Muppet performers in her career, she has been interviewed by one, Grant Baciocco on the puppet podcast Under the Puppet. She is currently known for being the founder of her own company Puppetlandia, where she builds all kinds of puppets as mentioned. Some of the projects Annett Mateo did include Black Beauty, Dick Whittington, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, ...

Jessica Simon is a puppeteer, puppet designer/builder, and director who is known for doing freelance work throughout her career including various puppet workshops. She performed at the Puppeteers of America Festival and also received a couple awards from the Jim Henson Foundation. Jessica has been a puppet fabricator for multiple companies like Jim Henson's Creature Shop, Rick Lyon Puppets, Puppet Kitchen, and more. Simon was also credited as part of Creature Shop team on Sesame Street for its 48th season and probably doing more since, just uncredited maybe. Outside, she performed at many venues like La MaMa, Dixon Place, Puppet Kitchen, Streb Lab, and St. Ann's Warehouse, and more. Some of the other puppet builders she worked with include Michael Schupbach, Emily DeCola, Ben Durocher, and Michelle Hickey, to name a few. Apart from puppetry, Jessica Simon was a co-producer of a series of short puppet films by Handmade Puppet Dreams. She has also directed a portion of Alva Roger...

Sharon Johnson is a puppeteer and writer is best known for creating and performing her own series of puppet shows known as Grace & Grins. For her shows, she uses bunraku (or table-top) style puppets while dressing in all black. Prior to her shows, Sharon began puppeteering in the mid 90s with a group called Kids on the Block-Rochester before writing and performing original shows since. Even though Johnson hardly did any Sesame Street or Henson Company projects, she met one Muppet performer in her career. That puppeteer was Grant Baciocco who interviewed her on his podcast Under the Puppet recently where they discussed her career in puppetry. But it's a shame she never performed with other Muppet performers in her life. With Grace & Grins, Sharon Johnson performed various original shows for many organizations and even hosted puppet-making workshops, according to her website. Some of the puppet shows she did include Kind Heart, All Together Now, A Jungle Journey, and more, al...