All About Muppets

Carl Chadd is a British puppeteer and puppet maker who served as one of the additional puppeteers on The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. Otherwise, he's best known for collaborating with Phil Fletcher, assisting with the latter's puppet company, The Gluvets. Carl performed in the company's many shows as well as numerous guest appearances at puppet festivals, according to his archived site. Chadd later founded his own puppet company known as Stuffet's Puppets where he makes and sells his puppets for people to use. Apart from Fletcher, he got to perform with several Henson performers while working on Age of Resistance including Dave Chapman, Helena Smee, Warrick Brownlow-Pike, Katherine Smee, and numerous others. According to a link from The Free Library website, he once performed a Gluvets tribute to Jim Henson, which featured Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy that ultimately got cut out thanks to a threat from Disney in 2011. Let's hope that Carl Chadd wasn't too ...

Jim Jinkins is an animator, cartoonist, kids' author, and actor who is perhaps best known for founding the companies Jumbo Pictures and Cartoon Pizza. With the latter company, he produced a segment on Sesame Street called Global Thingy, in which he also voiced the title character. At Jumbo Pictures, Jim created the ever-popular series Doug (both versions) as well as creating Allegra's Window, PB&J Otter, and 101 Dalmatians: The Series. At Cartoon Pizza, Jinkins created JoJo's Circus, Stanley (series), and Pinky Dinky Doo (co-produced by Sesame Workshop). It's amazing how one animator can create all of those different shows for different broadcasting networks over the years. Not a lot of people know this, but before becoming an animator, he served as a puppeteer on Pinwheel where he performed Minus and assisted Brad Williams on the live-hand puppets. In addition to Williams, Jim Jinkins performed with Craig Marin and Olga Felgemacher, and years later, he worked with ...

Larissa Deak is an Australian puppeteer, artist, designer, and arts worker who worked with a bunch of Creature Shop puppeteers on Series 1 of The Wiggles. She got to work with Graeme Haddon, Melissa King, Gavin Sainsbury, and Mat McCoy on the puppet segments of that show. Larissa has also been one of the committee members of UNIMA Australia since 2021, according to her LinkedIn profile. Deak did lots of stuff as an arts worker over the years such as designing and delivering creative programs for lots of venues such as theatre companies. She is also one of those puppeteers to be experienced tour guides, where she gave Public Art walking tours at the Museum of Brisbane. She must have felt honored to be one of the puppeteers on a series starring The Wiggles back in 1997-1998 when production happened to take place. I wonder what other productions Larissa Deak puppeteered on throughout her career. Maybe she was uncredited on the Creature Shop series Farscape, you never know when that kind o...

Melissa King is an Australian puppeteer, actress, voice actress, and director who guest puppeteered on Farscape alongside other Australian puppeteers. She is known for performing with various theatres over the years in her career like Riverina Theatre Co, Belvoir St. Joining Terrapin Puppet Theatre, Blue Cow Theatre, and lots more. Melissa did more than a dozen shows both nationally and internationally which got her nominated in the best actor category for her role in The Riddle of Washpool Gully. King also got to puppeteer with kid band The Wiggles in The Wiggles Movie and series one, alongside others such as Edward Rooke, Gavin Sainsbury, Sheryl Talmage, and Larissa Deak. Her on-screen acting credits have included Deadloch, The Gloaming, Fallen Angels, and Rose Haven, to name a few. It's a shame she only did one production with the Henson Company because they hardly do a lot of productions in Australia, but Muppet performers have visited Australia lots of times for appearances. S...

Thomas Roos is a Danish puppeteer who performs Elmo on the Danish co-production of Sesame Street, Sesamgade, which premiered in 2009. He auditioned for the role in July 2009 and was trained by Kevin Clash himself in Copenhagen. Thomas was paired with Peter Norgaard and Martin Sælan who served as his assistants, while the latter performed moving letters for select episodes. Roos must have felt thrilled to be trained by the legendary performer of Sesame Street's Elmo, Clash was a puppet captain. Outside of doing Elmo on Sesamgade, he puppeteered on Radio Karen, the Crank Yankers inspired show, and he performed Øvst on Ramajetterne on DR (Danish Radio). It's a shame Sesamgade only had Elmo on the series, there's always room for a bunch of performers with their own Muppet characters. Thomas Roos still got to do so much more outside of the show as seen on his website. He performed for people of all ages but his page on Muppet Wiki should be updated so everyone who isn't Dani...

Gavin Sainsbury is an Australian puppeteer, prop master, and mechanist who puppeteered on a couple of Henson Company projects such as Bambaloo, Farscape, and the stage show Pan. He got to work with several performers on the former two such as Fiona Gentle, Mat McCoy, Roslyn Oades, Sean Masterson and more. It's a good thing Gavin has a resume and work account, so anybody who wants to know about him, can look up online and read his projects. Some of the outside projects Sainsbury puppeteered on include The Wiggles, Raggs, New MacDonald's Farm, When Good Ghouls Go Bad, and most notably, the Walking with Dinosaurs Arena Spectacular. In addition to puppetry, he also provided standby props for Hi-5 and was a machinist and stage manager for numerous live shows. His endorses have included Paul McGinnis and Graeme Haddon who directed him on some of the projects listed. Gavin Sainsbury seems to be highly skilled at both regular puppets as well as animatronic puppets which earned him the ...