All About Muppets

Basil Twist is a puppeteer and director based in New York who is best known for his underwater puppet show called Symphonie Fantastique. Since 1998, he has been directing and performing puppet shows to live orchestra music like in Master Peter's Puppet Show, Dogugaeshi, and Hansel & Gretel, just to name a few. Basil seems to be another one of those puppeteers to work in operas and anything classical, similar to James Ortiz, Mary McClung, and Haley Who. Twist also made the puppetry for the Broadway productions of The Addams Family and The Pee-Wee Herman Show, both in 2010. Some of the projects he did have used unique styles of puppetry like Symphonie Fantastique was done in a water tank. His other abstract puppetry techniques include creating wind puppetry for Red Beads and in Dogugaeshi he used Japanese sliding screens to tell the story. It would seem that Basil Twist has a taste in unique styles of puppetry and he somehow manages to direct them so well, working alongside other...

Jody St. Michael is a mime and occasional suit performer who has performed on a few projects by the Creature Shop. He worked on Dinosaurs (as the Clerk in a 3rd season episode), George of the Jungle (a gorilla), and The Country Bears (as Tennessee O'Neil). I don't know why Jody only performed on three Creature Shop projects in his career, but still, three is better than nothing. Outside, St. Michael has been seen as a gorilla performer on many projects such as Gorillas in the Mist, The Last Chance Detectives: Legend of the Desert Bigfoot, X-Files, and Father Dowling Mysteries. Other films include Monkeybone and Hellraiser: Bloodline while other TV shows include CHiPs (out of costume) and The Chronicle. He must have been very tired performing in-suit as a lot of creatures. Other performers Jody St. Michael got to work with at the Creature Shop include Leif Tilden, Mak Wilson, Julianne Buescher, Denise Cheshire, and many mothers. He may have only done a few Creature Shop producti...

Kirsten Langbo was a Norwegian children's writer, singer-songwriter, puppeteer, and entertainer who had entertained children across Norway for years. She started out as a writer for silly articles in the newspaper Drammens Tidende before becoming a children's entertainer. Kirsten later made appearances in the 1950s performing her own songs and told her childhood stories, like on a Norwegian radio show. Langbo even appeared in NRK television shows as a ventriloquist with hand puppets which she did later in her musical career. From 1978 onwards, she became a popular entertainer and toured across Norway doing her puppet shows and songs, with over eighty registered songs. In addition, to children's entertainment, she is also an author of many Norwegian books with her first one being Morn igjen which released in 1957. Kirsten Langbo could have performed on the Norwegian co-production of Sesame Street, Sesam Stasjon, performing alongside Hanne Dahle, Geir Borresen, Asmund Huser, ...

Annie Katsura Rollins is an artist, puppeteer, and scenic designer who is specialized in Chinese shadow puppetry. She was apprenticed by many people in this art, even spending a year in China learning shadow puppetry from masters Cui and Wang. Annie also created and performed two shadow bike tours during her time in China and apprenticed with Master Shi and Master Liu as well as others. Rollins then created a full-length work known as There's Nothing to Tell and performed it in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As for her career, she worked with the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, created the set for the dance piece Black Label Movement, and designed puppets for the puppet adaptation of The Purple Flower. In addition to performing shadow puppetry, Annie Katsura Rollins also taught workshops at Open Eye Figure Theatre and the Center for Puppetry Arts. I'll bet she met some Muppet performers during her time at the Center for Puppetry Arts, because they are always training new pup...

Wilhelm Helmrich was a German puppeteer who performed Finchen from 1986-1991 on the German co-production of Sesame Street, Sesamstrasse. On that show he got to work with other German puppeteers such as Marita Stolze, Kerstin Siebmann-Roders, Herbert Langemann, and many others. Outside Wilhelm was a principal puppeteer on the show Hallo Spencer from the beginning in 1979 to 1991 as Elvis and other recurring/minor characters. Helmrich played the devil figure Nero, villager Edigus Soltanelle, Kalle Akademix in a spin-off series, and numerous others. I wonder how he got selected to perform on Hallo Spencer and Sesamstrasse during his career. It's a shame he never did any other production after 1991 as that's the year he died. Despite being gone, Wilhelm Helmrich will never be forgotten by those who've worked with him and the German viewers who've seen his work on those shows. He also worked with a bunch of other puppeteers who worked on Sesamstrasse later in their careers. ...

Neal Scanlan is a British special effects artist and make-up artist who has worked on numerous Creature Shop productions from 1985-2005. He started out as one of the puppeteers on Dreamchild before being in the workshop for Labyrinth, The Storyteller, TMNT films, Dinosaurs, and Babe, the latter won him an Academy Award. Neal had the pleasure to work with Jim Henson and other legendary Muppet performers during his time with them, before and after Jim's death. Scanlan must have had a lot of training prior to making animatronic characters for films and television shows over the years. Outside, he is perhaps best-known for working on the Star Wars sequel trilogy and standalone films. He is also the founder and head designer/builder of his own company Neal Scanlan Studios, making costumes, puppets, and animatronics for film and television. Some of the other films Neal Scanlan did include Little Shop of Horrors, Babe: Pig in the City, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Jurassic World...