All About Muppets

Theodora Skipitares is a puppeteer and interdisciplinary artist who is based in New York and is known for her contributions to the world of puppetry. Initially trained as a sculptor and theater designer, she started out creating autobiographical solo performances during the late 1970s. Theodora became a puppeteer later where she used various puppets of all sizes to examine social and political themes. Skipitares managed to create 26 original projects with numerous forms of puppetry, original music, video, and documentary texts too. She shared her first "puppets" in 1981, in the form of 30-inch self-portrait figures for performances, from supporting to major roles. From the 1980s to the early 1990s, she created large-scale puppet shows on several different topics, shows including The Age of Invention, Defenders of the Code, Empires and Appetites, and The Radiant City, to name a few. Theodora Skipitares soon became a resident artist at the experimental theater La MaMa in 1992, ...

Mollie Falkenstein was a puppeteer and dancer who was known for her work with finger puppets. Since her childhood, she travelled from England to Canada to the US, where she remained. Prior to becoming a puppeteer, Mollie was a professional dancer, performing in both the musical film and live show versions of Rio Rita. Falkenstein soon got involved with puppets thanks to her daughter Jan, who made puppets and a show to accompany them. She also performed a one-woman show involving finger puppet ballerinas which became known as the dancing ballet later on. The way the ballet puppets worked was by the molded legs attached to her fingers and strings controlling the heads and arms. Mollie Falkenstein sure knew how to make those finger puppets move so gracefully in a technique that became known as "ballerette." Later she founded a puppetry guild in 1961 and attended several UNIMA organizations as the years went by prior to becoming vice president of the US one from 1976-1980. This e...

Audrey Atterbury was a British puppeteer and antiques dealer who was best known for her work on many puppet series during the 1950s-1960s. She started out performing on BBC children's series Andy Pandy before performing on Flower Pot Men, The Woodentops, and The Telegoons. Audrey was one of those many puppeteers to perform on television before the Jim Henson era, though she probably never heard of the man during that time. Atterbury also did puppet plays by Gordon Murray such as Rubovian Legends alongside her close puppeteer friend Molly Gibson. She even worked for the Little Angel Theatre, one of Britain's leading puppet theatres, where Ronnie LeDrew and Sarah Burgess also performed years later. It's a shame she mostly did puppetry during the 1950s and early 1960s for she could've had the opportunity to learn about the Muppets and their performers. Later in the 1960s, Audrey Atterbury stopped working with puppets due to animation taking over during that time and became...

John Simmit is a British actor, stand-up comedian, and suit performer who is best known for being the original performer of Dipsy on Teletubbies from 1997-2001. He worked alongside Nikky Smedley, Pui Fan Lee, Dave Thompson, and Simon Shelton who portrayed the other Teletubbies. John also worked with puppeteer Mark Dean who was the original Noo-Noo as well as Robin Stevens and Andrew Davenport who were crew members. Simmit probably had a hard time moving around in that heavy costume because he could only see out through the mouth and each Teletubby costume has mechanisms in the arms that control the eyes and mouths. In addition to being on that show, he also acted out of suit on many television shows such as The Real McCoy, The Gadget Show, and The Big Fat Quiz of the '90s. As well as acting, he does comedy, mostly producing through Upfront Comedy. For 25 years, John Simmit has put together comedy shows into UK theatres nationwide, as well as two major shows within two states in the...

Bill Traetta is a puppeteer and costumer who did the former for television and the latter for feature films in the science fiction genre. He puppeteered on McDonaldland, Jingle All the Way, and The Mr. Potato Head Show, as well as being assistant puppet master for the latter. Bill worked with many puppeteers such as Terry Castillo, Mark Bryan Wilson, and Tony Urbano, as well as voice actress Debra Wilson. Traetta has not done any puppetry projects since Mr. Potato Head ended after only one season. As for his costuming credits, he did many films such as Man of Steel, Star Trek Into Darkness, Ghost of Mars, and even Obi-Wan Kenobi, though the latter was a mini-series. It's a shame there's no image of the person himself, but he did get interviewed in a YouTube video which shows his face perfectly. Even though Bill Traetta never worked on any Henson Company or Muppet projects, he still worked with several Muppet performers on some of the shows mentioned above. I hope he managed to ...

Dave Privett is a puppeteer, puppet designer/builder, writer, and set designer who is best known for his work on the Baby Einstein video series. He is also the founder of the puppet company PlaySoup alongside his wife June Privett. In addition to Baby Einstein, Dave was also a puppeteer and builder at Animax Designs, mostly performing on the Trollies video series and playing Snowbird the Penguin. Privett also worked with a few Henson people at Animax such as Jeff Conover, Eddie May, and Chuck Fawcett, as well as Kim Snodgrass and Steve Pennington too. He may not have done any Henson or Sesame Street projects, but he still worked on videos suitable for babies and children. Upon turning over PlaySoup to the new owners, Kristofer and Amanda Sommerfeld, he now works for DMPCreative and sold his puppet creations online. Other non-Baby Einstein production Dave Privett and his wife did was the Christian video series Baby Faith and the sign-language video series Baby Signs, two series made for...