All About Muppets

Jessica Simon is a puppeteer, puppet designer/builder, and director who is known for doing freelance work throughout her career including various puppet workshops. She performed at the Puppeteers of America Festival and also received a couple awards from the Jim Henson Foundation. Jessica has been a puppet fabricator for multiple companies like Jim Henson's Creature Shop, Rick Lyon Puppets, Puppet Kitchen, and more. Simon was also credited as part of Creature Shop team on Sesame Street for its 48th season and probably doing more since, just uncredited maybe. Outside, she performed at many venues like La MaMa, Dixon Place, Puppet Kitchen, Streb Lab, and St. Ann's Warehouse, and more. Some of the other puppet builders she worked with include Michael Schupbach, Emily DeCola, Ben Durocher, and Michelle Hickey, to name a few. Apart from puppetry, Jessica Simon was a co-producer of a series of short puppet films by Handmade Puppet Dreams. She has also directed a portion of Alva Roger...

Sharon Johnson is a puppeteer and writer is best known for creating and performing her own series of puppet shows known as Grace & Grins. For her shows, she uses bunraku (or table-top) style puppets while dressing in all black. Prior to her shows, Sharon began puppeteering in the mid 90s with a group called Kids on the Block-Rochester before writing and performing original shows since. Even though Johnson hardly did any Sesame Street or Henson Company projects, she met one Muppet performer in her career. That puppeteer was Grant Baciocco who interviewed her on his podcast Under the Puppet recently where they discussed her career in puppetry. But it's a shame she never performed with other Muppet performers in her life. With Grace & Grins, Sharon Johnson performed various original shows for many organizations and even hosted puppet-making workshops, according to her website. Some of the puppet shows she did include Kind Heart, All Together Now, A Jungle Journey, and more, al...