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Noriko Nishimoto

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Noriko Nishimoto was a Japanese-Australian puppeteer, puppet artist, writer, and director best known for doing freelance work throughout her career. Her career started out in Japan, spending 16 years as a performer, writer, and director for Osaka's La Clarte Puppet Theatre before going freelance. Noriko was soon discovered by Australian puppetry director Peter Wilson in 1980, who invited her to Australia to perform at the Festival of Perth in a performance of Faust. A year later, Nishimoto was invited again to join Wilson's company, Spare Parts Puppet Theatre as a puppet master. After a three-year tenure down under, she relinquished her Japanese citizenship to take up Australian citizenship. Nobody can blame her for doing that, because that was a huge opportunity that impacted her career over the years. After a time as being puppet master of Spare Parts, Noriko Nishimoto became assistant artistic director in 1987 then ten years later became the artistic director. She soon stepp...
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Doug Kincaid

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Doug Kincaid is a performer, writer, and artist best known for working with both puppetry and mascot costumes throughout his career. In 1977 at age 15, he co-founded The Kincaid Karacter Company with his brother William Kincaid, which eventually became one of the greatest known national producers of mascot costumes. It's amazing that Doug managed to form a company when he was only a teenager, a company that later developed and manufactured iconic mascots in America. From 1978-1981, Kincaid and his brother worked at Six Flags Theme Park in Missouri, playing costumed characters, performing in the puppet theater, and creating sets/characters for the haunted attractions and commercials. The two brothers were also a team on television within two children shows, D.B.'s Delight and Gator Tales, even though William left the company to pursue other careers in 1989. It's too bad he never met one Muppet performer in his career, but he was probably busy. In the summer of 1993, Doug Kin...
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Christophe Albertini

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Christophe Albertini is a French puppeteer and voice actor who has performed Elmo on the French co-production of Sesame Street, 5 Rue Sesame and also puppeteered on Muppets TV. He got to perform alongside other performers on those productions including Yves Brunier, Regis Fassier, Charlie Bazire, and Evelyne Scheigam. Outside, Christophe was a digital puppeteer for The Adventures of Pinocchio (as Pepe the Cricket) and on the French TV series Cyberflash (as Cleo's face). It's a shame Albertini currently doesn't have any personal info about himself anywhere online, besides the Wiki and IMDb naturally. Still, it was nice that he got to perform on an international co-production of Sesame Street as well as a French-language show starring the Disney Muppets. He also voiced Donkey Kong for a time on DKTV but soon left and the role got succeeded by another voice actor. Christophe Albertini's info will probably continue to grow as time goes by, after all, Fandom is on top of eve...
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Martin Reinl

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Martin Reinl is a German puppeteer, comedian, and writer who is perhaps best known for performing Elmo, Grover, and Wolf on the German co-production of Sesame Street, Sesamstrasse. He first joined the show in 2008 as an additional performer before gaining his characters later. Martin also dubs Elmo in all US scenes and projects since 2012. Reinl should be proud to perform an international version of such an iconic character, whether on the show, it's spinoff, etc. Outside of Sesamstrasse, he has his own production company known as bigSmile-Entertainment, producing various television puppetry shows and what-not. Some of the shows he performed on include Jan & Henry, Woozle Goozle, and Wiwaldi Show, just to name a few. In addition to performing, Martin Reinl also co-hosts the German language puppet podcast Puppkultur where they discuss Muppets, Dinosaurs, and many other puppet productions and characters, Henson-related or not. He also does voice acting like dubbing the title char...
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Alex "Jurgen" Ferguson

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Alex "Jurgen" Ferguson is a puppet and costume builder, set dresser, and puppeteer known for working on many Muppet projects, mostly recent ones. He also worked on Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, and a few Creature Shop-effects films, like Where the Wild Things Are for example. Alex's work with the Muppets began with Muppets from Space before moving on to more recent projects such as Muppets Now and The Muppets Mayhem. Ferguson also served as a supporting Muppet performer on The Muppet Show (2026 special) in addition to being in the workshop. I'll bet he was very excited to be an additional performer on the 50th anniversary of such an iconic original series. Outside, he built the character costumes on Yo Gabba Gabba! and the puppets on Imagination Movers, Little Alvin and the Mini-Munks, and The Barbarian and the Troll. In addition to puppets, Alex "Jurgen" Ferguson was also a set dresser and/or swing crew on many films like The Night Flier, B...
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Eka Vogelnik

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Eka Vogelnik was a Slovene puppeteer, puppet maker, illustrator, designer, and director who was known for using of those qualities in her career. Throughout her career, she illustrated over 30 books, served as the artistic designer for over 30 theatre productions, and was the author of seven puppet shows and lots of film and TV productions. Eka should be one of those legendary puppeteers who made history, since it is very rare for a person to make history doing almost everything artistic in show business. Vogelnik has also made puppet animated films, mainly using stop-motion animation like Makalonca, A Tolar saved, Pearl Mountain, and The Forgotten Books of Our Grannies series. It's a shame there is no Slovenian co-production of Sesame Street, because she would've been perfect to be one of the performers. In the later years of her career, she mainly developed different types of puppets and teaching puppetry, something numerous masters of puppetry do. If only Eka Vogelnik would...
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Galia Yishai

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Galia Yishai was an Israeli actress and singer known for performing on stage, film, and television from 1971-2020. In 1986, she appeared as herself within the Israeli co-production of Sesame Street, Rechov Sumsum, where she interacted with Sarai Tzuriel and Gilles Ben-David. Wikipedia states that Galia was also a puppeteer, but it remains unknown what shows she puppeteered on. Yishai mostly acted on-stage within Israel's repertoire theatres such as Habima Theatre, the Bimot Theatre, the Cameri Theater, Haifa Theatre, and Bein Lessin Theater. She must have puppeteered in one of those theaters, you never know based on the types of roles she received in the shows. Some of the plays she did include Peer Gynt, All My Sons, Puss in Boots, Quo Vadis, and more. Galia Yishai also acted on television and film like Am Yisrael Hai, Parpar Nechmad, Hunting Elephants, Life is Not Everything, and many others. It's a shame she never puppeteered on that international co-production of Sesame Str...
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