Chase Woolner

Chase Woolner is a puppeteer and puppet builder from Chicago who served as an additional puppeteer on The Muppets (2011) and Muppets Most Wanted as well as an intern with Puppet Heap. At a young age, his puppetry interest began, performing publicity for his elementary school classes. Chase later joined the San Francisco Bay Area Puppet Guild and became one of the youngest members, during his time in California that is. Woolner must have been very lucky to be a member of a puppet company in his childhood. He has even trained with many of the top puppeteers and builders in the world. Since 2008, after finishing his education, he participated several times at the National Puppetry Conference and worked professionally with Puppet Heap, the Creature Shop, and even a concept designer with Walt Disney Imagineering. Other puppeteers Chase Woolner worked with include, Len Levitt, Tanya Haden,  BJ Guyer, and Tim Blaney, just to name a few. In 2011, he made his own, original story puppet short, called s'Muther which was screened at film and puppetry festivals the same year. I've read that he also served as a dancer for the Just Dance video game franchise since 2009, which was probably done by a motion capture system or something. Chase was last seen with the Muppets in the series The Muppets and hasn't worked with them since, for unknown reasons as of now. Woolner must have been busy with his other projects and is probably still making original puppet shorts today. He was last seen within an interview on the puppet podcast Puppet Tears where he shared his story and projects. Let's just hope he will rejoin the Muppets again for their future projects. Chase Woolner, you were great with the Muppets whether it was in the shop or on the set. Keep on building and performing puppets and make everyone proud of how far you came, especially your parents. Excellent puppet job Chase. Rock on Woolner!

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