All About Muppets

Richard Robinson is a British puppeteer, actor, writer, and festival director who is known for founding the Brighton Science Festival, the biggest science festival in the UK. As a puppeteer, he built and performed puppets for many shows like Spitting Image, The Riddlers, Dizzy Heights, Puddle Lane. The only series Richard performed on where he didn't build the puppets was on the 1994 revival of Rainbow, where he played Bungle. Prior to becoming a puppeteer, Robinson was a busker until the mid-1990s when he was exposed to science and became a science busker with science cabaret acts. I don't think anyone on Earth has ever combined science with cabaret performances. In addition to puppetry, he also wrote nearly twenty books on science with his best-known ones being The Science Magic books and Why the Toast Always Lands Butter-Side Down. It seems that Richard Robinson is more focused on science than entertainment since founding and directing the Brighton Science Festival from 2005...

Glenn Williams is a Canadian puppeteer, actor, voice actor, and ventriloquist who is best known for being one of the puppeteers of Dr. Colosso on The Thundermans. For over 50 years, he's done many entertainment styles since the age of 7 when he showcased his ventriloquism on Pete's Place. Now an adult, Glenn has puppeteered on numerous productions, besides Thundermans, such as Tomorrowland, Animal Control, X Files, and Critters: A New Binge, to name a few. As for on-screen acting, Williams appeared in numerous television shows and films such as Millennium, Hostage Negotiator, The Christmas Train, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Other puppeteers he got to work with in his career include Jeny Cassady, probably the only Muppet puppeteer to ever work with him, so far at least. It's a shame he didn't puppeteer on Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, he would've been perfect as one of the additional performers. Glenn Williams still got to become another one of the greatest...

Eugene Lambert was an Irish puppeteer and actor as well as the father of puppeteers Miriam and Paula Lambert. He was the owner of Lambert Puppet Theatre and was well-known for performing co-star O'Brien in the shows Wanderly Wagon and Murphy and Friends. In addition to those programs, Eugene was also a ventriloquist, performing vaudeville acts with two of his puppet characters; Finnegan and Judge. Lambert seems to have brought a lot of humor among the Ireland citizens during the 1960s. With his family, they created The Lambert Puppet Theatre in 1972 upon inspiration from visiting The Harlequin Puppet Theatre and an International Puppet Festival in Prague. His company was also best-known for creating the puppet character Bosco which his daughters Miriam then Paula performed. Throughout his job, Eugene Lambert went on tours with his character Finnegan, starting out in the UK and Ireland during the early years before branching out into the US, Japan, and Australia in later years. It...

Larry Basgall is a puppeteer and puppet builder/wrangler who is known for his work on projects by Spiffy Pictures, working alongside David Rudman. He worked on almost every puppetry project by the company including Jack's Big Music Show, Bunnytown, Curious Buddies, and Donkey Hodie. Larry got to perform alongside various Muppet performers for those shows, besides Rudman, including Frankie Cordero, Haley Jenkins, Alice Dinnean, and John Kennedy, to name a few. Basgall must have been honored to work for such an incredible team of people who run Spiffy Pictures and perform on the productions. Away from the company, he is also the treasurer of another company called the West Michigan Puppetry Guild, where the team builds a puppet community across Michigan. But his most notable company where he got to be in charge was a company called The Village Puppeteers where he and Mike Schwabe developed many shows for both children and adults. It would seem that Larry Basgall is a really active pu...

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...