All About Muppets

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...

Audrey Atterbury was a British puppeteer and antiques dealer who was best known for her work on many puppet series during the 1950s-1960s. She started out performing on BBC children's series Andy Pandy before performing on Flower Pot Men, The Woodentops, and The Telegoons. Audrey was one of those many puppeteers to perform on television before the Jim Henson era, though she probably never heard of the man during that time. Atterbury also did puppet plays by Gordon Murray such as Rubovian Legends alongside her close puppeteer friend Molly Gibson. She even worked for the Little Angel Theatre, one of Britain's leading puppet theatres, where Ronnie LeDrew and Sarah Burgess also performed years later. It's a shame she mostly did puppetry during the 1950s and early 1960s for she could've had the opportunity to learn about the Muppets and their performers. Later in the 1960s, Audrey Atterbury stopped working with puppets due to animation taking over during that time and became...

John Simmit is a British actor, stand-up comedian, and suit performer who is best known for being the original performer of Dipsy on Teletubbies from 1997-2001. He worked alongside Nikky Smedley, Pui Fan Lee, Dave Thompson, and Simon Shelton who portrayed the other Teletubbies. John also worked with puppeteer Mark Dean who was the original Noo-Noo as well as Robin Stevens and Andrew Davenport who were crew members. Simmit probably had a hard time moving around in that heavy costume because he could only see out through the mouth and each Teletubby costume has mechanisms in the arms that control the eyes and mouths. In addition to being on that show, he also acted out of suit on many television shows such as The Real McCoy, The Gadget Show, and The Big Fat Quiz of the '90s. As well as acting, he does comedy, mostly producing through Upfront Comedy. For 25 years, John Simmit has put together comedy shows into UK theatres nationwide, as well as two major shows within two states in the...