All About Muppets

Heather Asch is a puppeteer, puppet creator/wrangler, and producer who was puppet builder in various Muppet/Henson productions. She also puppeteered on Sesame Street for three seasons, assisting and doing minor characters. Heather also puppeteered on The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, Bear in the Big Blue House, and A Muppet Christmas: Letters to Santa. Asch also did a couple of Sesame Street outreach videos and one home video. She still worked with the greatest puppeteers on Earth such as Pam Arciero, Tim Lagasse, Jennifer Barnhart, and Joey Mazzarino. Outside of Sesame Street and the Muppets, she puppeteered on various kid shows for many television networks, beginning with Allegra's Window. Some of the best shows Heather Asch did include Between the Lions, Johnny and the Sprites, Blue's Room, and Once Upon a Tree, just to name a few. She has also worked with James Kroupa at 3/Design Studios in the puppet workshop on many projects, such as the two mentioned above. I never knew...

Olga Felgemacher is a puppeteer and puppet/marionette builder who has performed with both puppets and marionettes for many years. First she started out working with Bil Baird Marionettes for nine years before accepting an offer from Jim Henson to perform with the Muppets. Olga performed many AMs on Sesame Street for seasons 9-10 though she was uncredited. Felgemacher also served as an additional Muppet performer for The Muppet Movie, leaving after production was completed. She later married puppeteer, puppet maker, and director Craig Marin, and together they created Flexitoon. The company is famous for making puppets and marionettes for various projects, most notably, the Jukebox Band for Shining Time Station and the marionettes and moles for Pinwheel. If only Jim Henson was alive to see what kind of work Olga Felgemacher did over time. She'd probably be one of those Muppet performers who worked with marionettes more often than the others. In addition to Craig, she got to be along...

Lisa Buckley is a puppeteer and puppet designer/builder from Connecticut who has performed various characters on Sesame Street during the 1990's. Her most notable character was Betty Lou (originally performed by Fran Brill and others). Lisa also worked on Dog City as Ms. Fluffe and in some Muppet content like the Kokomo music video and Muppet Meeting Films. Outside of Sesame Street, Buckley is married to the experienced puppeteer and puppet creator, Bob Fappiano. Together they've created the company Fappiano Puppets and created/performed hundreds of puppets for many projects, most notably ALF. It must have been hard to do a series featuring a puppet on-location throughout. Lisa Buckley and her husband performed occasional guest puppets and were "special assistants" to Paul Fusco. She also performed on MATHmatazz (also built puppets), Between the Lions, Johnny and the Sprites, Oobi, and freelance work for CTW. Fappiano Puppets has also created the puppets for Blue...

Allan Trautman is a puppeteer and director who is best known for performing in various Muppet and Henson productions. His first work with the Muppets was on Muppet*Vision 3D, a Disney theme park attraction which he got to meet Jim Henson. Allan later performed on Dinosaurs as the face operator for various characters including the main character Fran Sinclair. Trautman soon played various characters with the Muppets as seen in Muppets Tonight, Muppet Classic Theater, and Muppets from Space, just to name a few. He is also a chief puppeteer for Henson Alternative where he performed on Puppet Up, Alt/Reality, The Happytime Murders, and more. For directing, he directed PBS Kids shows Splash & Bubbles (performed too ) and Sid the Science Kid, both shows are Henson Company projects. Outside of Henson and the Muppets, Allan Trautman puppeteered on many projects like Greg the Bunny, Pryor's Place, and The Adventures of Timmy the Tooth, to name a few. He must be exhausted working on all...