All About Muppets

Mary McClung is a puppeteer, costume designer, and professor at West Virginia University who teaches both theatrical skills to students. She started off working at Animax Designs in 1994, doing projects for Disney, Sesame Workshop, and Universal Studios. Mary got to work with Chuck Fawcett, Jeff Conover, Kim Snodgrass, and other performers who worked at Animax during that time. McClung also designed costumes for The Beggar's Opera which won an award in 2002 and later designed costumes for the WVU dance concert piece known as The Elementals. It's amazing that a former puppet company employee would become a professor to teach these skills to students interested in that area. In 2015, she inherited leadership of the WVU Puppet Mobile from her retired mentor Joann Siegrist, bringing theatrical performances to West Virginia communities for over 30 years. Mary McClung also toured elementary schools across the state, performing shows which she saw as educational and professional train...

Ingrid Crepeau is a puppeteer and costumer who is known for her work with DinoRock Productions and also performed Jessica D'Antelope on the show Animal Planet News. In addition, she also built National Park Star Wars Day costumes and maintained the regular ones for six whole years. Ingrid mostly did her work with DinoRock paired alongside Michele Valeri doing shows such as Dinosaur Babies. Crepeau had used hand puppets, marionettes, and everything in between within that show. She even hosted her own YouTube puppet making web series known as Crafty Thoughts. It's a shame DinoRock Productions is no longer doing shows anymore as Dinosaur Babies was their very last one, according to a news article seen online. In addition to puppetry and costuming, Ingrid Crepeau also wrote a book called A Show of Hands, it's all about people using puppets with young kids. Pity she never worked with any Muppet performers why she probably never even heard of them. At least she's got a lot of...

David Joyner is an actor, suit performer, and therapist who is best known for being in-suit as Barney from 1991-2001 on Barney & Friends and its predecessor Barney & the Backyard Gang. He played the loveable purple dinosaur for six seasons, numerous home videos, and a couple concerts, all with Bob West doing the voice of Barney. Though I bet David had extreme difficulty physically performing the character as he was in a heavy costume biting down on a rod that moves Barney's mouth. Over the years, Joyner got to interact with a few Muppet performers like Alice Dinnean and Noel MacNeal in the Kids for Character video, doing their characters from The Puzzle Place. Non-Muppet performers he met include Todd Duffey, Brice Armstrong, and Earl Fisher who did the puppet characters from Seasons 4-6, though they were all built by James Kroupa's company. In later years, he also was the suit performer of the title character on the show Hip Hop Harry from 2006-2008 and 2016-2019. Besi...

Carlos Marttelo is a Mexican puppeteer and voice actor best-known for his work on Plaza Sesamo, the Mexican co-production of Sesame Street. During the 2005 and 2010 seasons, he played various minor characters consisting of Anything Muppets and AM Monsters, as well as dubbing occasional inserts. Since 2011, Carlos performed the role of Elmo on the series in the "plaza" segments and the dubbing on both the series and web videos. Marttelo should be proud to perform and dub an international version of the little red monster just like every Elmo performer around the world. Other puppeteers he got to work with on the show include Verenice Callejo, Alfonso Soto, Maripaz Garcia, and Igor Cruz, to name a few. Outside of Plaza Sesamo, he provided additional voices in Spanish dubs of Lost, Legally Blondes, Hannah Montana: The Movie, and A Beautiful Mind. As for cartoon dubs, Carlos Marttelo mostly did Disney projects such as Prep & Landing, Tinker Bell & the Lost Treasure, and T...

Scott Land is a puppeteer, actor, producer, and puppet builder best known for working with marionettes at Bob Baker Marionettes and his own marionette company. He puppeteered on The Princess Diaries films, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Still Breathing, and most notably, Team America: World Police, some of which he also designed and built puppets. Scott has been highly trained by Bob Baker himself to work with both puppets and marionettes, after all he built puppets and was his roadshow puppeteer. Land also appeared on camera as a father for a Kidsongs home video and as Binky on an episode of Shades of LA. In addition to Baker, he got to perform alongside numerous other puppeteers such as Greg Ballora, Tony Urbano, Frank Langley, and Michael Earl, to name a few. He even got to show off his puppetry skills on an episode of America's Got Talent, though he only auditioned and didn't get to actually be live on stage. Scott Land is still best known by people for his work on Team America...

Gerald Home was a British actor and puppeteer who was best known for his work on Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, playing Tessek and a Mon Calamari officer. His other film credits include Little Shop of Horrors (as one of Audrey II's puppeteers), London Boulevard, and Chatroom. As for television, Gerald was one of the puppeteers on Spitting Image and made appearances on The Boot Street Band, Casualty, Harry's Mad, Keeping Mum, and various others. Home was also known for being the original Mr. Muscle in a batch of Mr. Muscle cleaning brand television commercials. As a puppeteer, he got to perform with legends such as Anthony Asbury, Mike Quinn, David Barclay, and Christopher Leith, all on Little Shop of Horrors. It was probably easier for him to puppeteer on Spitting Image as the film had complicated puppets. Gerald Home even got to work in the theatre within the West End of London area, like on No Sex Please, We're British, The Arabian Nights, and The Blue Angel, to name a fe...