All About Muppets

Arlee Chadwick is a puppeteer, designer, and builder who is best known for her performance on Boop! the Musical with Huber Marionettes (original cast) and Rockefeller projects. In addition to Boop, she also did various other shows such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show, The Little Prince, Dinosaur Train Live, and The Golden Girls Show. Apart from theatre, Arlee is the creator of Puppets by Arlee, where she builds custom puppets for theatre, film, and educational programming. Chadwick even got to perform in-suit for Sesame Street Live for 5 years and puppeteered on John Tartaglia's ImaginOcean. For the latter, she got to work with Ryan Dillon, Weston Chandler Long, Carole D'Agostino, and James Wojtal, all who work on Sesame Street. She seems to be well experienced with both puppets and marionettes as she's a resident artist at the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre, which does numerous performances. Arlee Chadwick is doing pretty well at performing puppets as well as desig...

Vicki Oceguera is a Native American actress, puppeteer, singer, and director who is known for her vast work in the theater, most notably with Rockefeller Studios. She may not have directly done Henson TV projects, but she did puppeteer on Dinosaur Train Live! and Sesame Street: The Musical, the latter with Yanniv Frank. Vicki also puppeteered on Clifford the Big Red Dog Live, The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show, Ajijaak on Turtle Island, and numerous others. Oceguera must've been trained by Sesame Street performers to puppeteer so well on stage. In addition to puppetry, she also acted in Honestly Abe, My Stage Daddy, US Drag, and staged readings of Rescue Rue and Before the Road. Some of the shows she performed on were also directed by her like the two acting credits mentioned in the previous sentence. I'll bet that performing a Sesame Street live show made Vicki Oceguera very excited as not a lot of lucky people get to do that. I certainly hope she continues to perform live on st...

Yanniv Frank is a puppeteer, puppet designer/builder, writer, and director who is known for his work in the theatre and for his company The Brother Earth Collaborative. As a puppeteer, he worked on many theatrical projects such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show, The Pocket Park Kids, Runaway Rue, and most recently, Sesame Street The Musical. Yanniv previously had puppetry training within Sesame Workshop where he was trained by many Muppet performers, including Martin P. Robinson and Matt Vogel. Frank only did two television programs which were Boyish Charms and Feel Your Best Self, the former he also got to build puppets, write, and direct. Hopefully with these two screen credits, he'll get to write and direct more productions in the future. He should be proud to have been trained by Sesame Street performers in which led him to stardom for both screen and stage. In addition to puppetry and directing, Yanniv Frank is also a musician with a catalogue of over 50 original songs, 3 so...

Hashim Haider is an Indian puppeteer, writer, and actor who is best known for playing Akshar Kumar on the Indian co-production of Sesame Street, Galli Galli Sim Sim. When he joined the show in 2006, he was initially a puppet wrangler before given the character during the second season. Hashim even got to help make Akshar Kumar one of the most prominent Muppets on Galli, though during the 6th season he was a constant character under the name Hero. Haider got to work alongside other Indian puppeteers on Sim Sim such as Ghazal Javid, Sangya Ojha, and Babita Kurdiya Rachoya, to name a few. Outside, he works as a freelance puppetry artist across Mumbai, India, as well as being co-founder of the Indian puppet company The Puppetarians alongside Sanya Ojha. I'll bet the two developed a co-worker thing while on Galli prior to founding the company. It must have been an honor for Hashim Haider to work on an international co-production of Sesame Street and be trained to puppeteer by Martin P. ...

Jay Tyson is a puppeteer, filmmaker, and puppet designer/builder who only did one Muppet production, the feature film Muppets from Space as an additional performer. He is more well known for doing his own puppet projects for screen and web. Jay could have also performed on The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland as both films were shot in North Carolina at the same production facility. Tyson probably was more interested in doing his own thing and working solo most of the time. Outside, he created the puppet films Coffee Impossible, PODS, The Story of One, and many other puppet shorts, all of which can be found online. He also wrote and produced several stage plays involving puppetry like The Time Machine and a version of the classic Frankenstein. Jay Tyson also designs and builds puppets for films such as The Mill, not to mention several television pilots. Other puppet related independent films and web series he made have included Royal Follies, 99 Acre Woods, and fan parodies like Off Tr...

Larry Reed (also known as Charles Lawson Reed III) was a puppeteer, designer, director, and producer who was best known for his work with shadow puppets. In fact, he was one of the first Western artists to train in traditional Indonesian shadow theatre during the 1970s when he traveled to Bali. Larry was best known by people for being the founder of ShadowLight Productions, a company that showcases shadow puppetry to wider audiences. Reed's major projects within the company have included Shadow Master, The Wild Party, In Xanadu, Coyote's Journey, and many more. The company even got to provide guest shadow puppets for the Kapiti Plain story during the second season of Between the Lions. In a lot of the productions mentioned above, he was either the designer, director, and/or producer of each show, which consisted of live music and an ensemble of puppeteers, actors, designers, composers, etc. Larry Reed really outdid himself when he introduced shadow puppetry to wider audiences, ...