All About Muppets

Mike Scanlan is a British puppeteer, puppet builder, and mechanical designer who has worked with the Creature Shop on numerous productions. He served as one of the regular dinosaur builders on Dinosaurs and also built puppets for Mother Goose Stories, Aliens in the Family, and Brats of the Lost Nebula. Mike even puppeteered on the Creature Shop film George of the Jungle with Julianne Buescher, Michelan Sisti, Rob Tygner, and Pons Maar. Outside of the Creature Shop, Scanlan worked on animatronics for Little Shop of Horrors, Dream Demon, and Gophers, as well as puppeteering for Monkeybone and providing alien effects for Alien 3. I wonder if this guy has any relation to designer Neal Scanlan as they both share the same last name, but I'll bet the former will deny it in an interview. His latest project with the Creature Shop was on The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance where he was a mechanic for the characters. In addition to the Creature Shop, Mike Scanlan also worked in the Muppet Wor...

Patrick Comerford is a British puppeteer who has performed on numerous Henson productions, though mostly uncredited. He performed on Muppet Treasure Island, 101 Dalmatians, Lost in Space, and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, uncredited on the former two. Patrick should have been credited on the Muppet film because he got to work with the legendary Muppet performers like Jerry Nelson and Dave Goelz. Comerford is more well-known outside of Henson, doing productions such as Spitting Image, The Spooks of Bottle Bay, Seed of Chucky, and several Star Wars films as a creature and droid puppeteer. He also co-founded the puppet company Global Puppeteering Services with Barnaby Harrison and together they performed different types of puppets for different productions. Other films he did include E.T. and Babe: Pig in the City while television include Wizadora, The Big Garage, Dog and Duck, and more. With the company and his performing partner, Patrick Comerford has spent over two decades worki...

Dean Bareham is a Canadian puppeteer, voice actor, puppet builder, and clown who is best known for his work as artistic director for the theatre company Green Fools. He was an additional puppeteer on Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock alongside many other performers such as Ali DeRegt, Jamie Konchak, Brendan James Boyd, and Andrew G. Cooper. It must have been very exciting for Dean to work on a reboot of such an iconic series, and to assist the main performers, all of which are legendary. Bareham also puppeteered on the show Joe Pickett and lent his voice to English dubs of anime such as Mobile Fighter G Gundam. Some of his other collaborations, according to his bio, include being a clown with Cirque du Soleil at Toronto's Luminato Festival and designing/building puppets and creatures for many zoos and aquariums all across North America. That's amazing for someone like him to have numerous contributions over the years in his career, which of course took him around the world. Dean B...

Jamie Konchak is a Canadian puppeteer, performer, educator, and creator known for a two-decade career in performing for screen and stage. She served as one of the additional puppeteers on Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock performing alongside Geneviève Paré, Ellis Lalonde, Ali DeRegt, and Reese Scott, to name a few. It must have been very exciting for Jamie to perform on a reboot of the classic Fraggle Rock series, and with numerous legendary Muppet performers as well. In addition, Konchak also works frequently at Ghost River Theatre as both a collaborator and "Artist in Residence", doing lots of performance skills like puppetry for example. Some of the shows within the company she performed on include Giant, Reverie, Something to do With Death, and Frontier. Besides performing and puppetry, she also educates performers and college students at the University of Calgary and also Six Degrees Music & Sound. Jamie Konchak is pretty active in the theatres across the Calgary area ...

Ilysia J. Pierce is a singer, actress, and performer who has performed for Jewish audiences for many years in her career. She started out originating the role of Miss Oops=A=Daisy on The Huggabug Club, voicing and being in-suit as the character. I wonder how Ilysia managed to do her voice from wearing a mascot-like costume constructed by the company KCL Productions. Pierce also performed theatrically in shows such as Janina, Beauty and the Beast, Irena Sendler, Fiddler on the Roof, and many others. She is also the cantor of the Beverly Hills Temple of the Arts, leading Jewish holiday services since joining in 1999. She isn't considered a puppeteer, but technically on The Huggabug Club, they had full-bodied costumes that sort of worked like puppets as well as occasional puppet shows. At least Ilysia J. Pierce did interact with puppets on that show, sort of. In or out of the temple, she displays her vocal talents to CDs and other local venues such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the...

Susan French was an actress (stage/television/film) and puppeteer who was best known for her many roles in films and such. She started out performing in theater and was one of the few performers to be involved with World War II, even starting a theatre group during that time. Susan's well-known films include Jaws 2, Somewhere in Time, House, Flatliners, and Young and Younger, to name a few. French also appeared in episodes of many television shows including Bare Essence, Cagney & Lacey, Quantum Leap, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and many others. Apparently during the 1960s, she also ran a puppet theater as well as publishing a book about doing puppetry called Presenting Marionettes, which shows that she indeed did puppetry in her career. Based on her appearances on-screen, she was a perfect fit to play elderly characters within some of the television shows and feature films she did over the years. Such a shame Susan French didn't puppeteer after the World War II era, she...