All About Muppets

Calvin Lester is a puppeteer, writer, and show creator who is perhaps best known for creating, writing, and performing on Bird Call. With years of experience in the puppetry industry, he got to perform on a number of theme park-based puppet shows by the Walt Disney Company. Some of the shows Calvin did with Disney include Bear in the Big Blue House Live, Voyage of the Little Mermaid, and Festival of the Lion King. Later, Lester became Puppet Specialist for the company, teaching both puppetry and shows to new performers for shows like The Muppets Present Great Moments in History. His LinkedIn profile states that he also worked with the Muppets on other projects outside of the parks, but it's unknown on which ones he did. Other projects include Jane Henson's Nativity, as well as teaching puppetry for the Disney Cruise Line in Canada, which I must say is pretty impressive for one guy to do. Calvin Lester is very talented at doing so much for Disney, but everyone currently knows hi...

Katie Williams (not to be confused with someone else) is an Australian puppeteer, puppet maker, and stop-motion modeler who is known for working with many companies. She puppeteered a Jim Henson's Creature Shop puppet on the Coldplay World Tour in Australia (originally used in Puppet Up). Katie is also known for working on the feature film Isle of Dogs as a maker for the stop-motion figures and also worked at Aardman Animations for a Coldplay music video. Williams also puppeteered on Knee High Spies (working with director Jack Jameson), Beep & Morp, Sunny, and Grow Your Oak, just to name a few. In addition to working in Australia, she also worked in the UK as some of the projects mentioned above are British ones. British shows she did include Clangers, The Tiny & Small Show, and a couple of ads filmed in the UK but sent to America. Katie Williams shouldn't be confused with Katy Williams as both are completely different people, despite being puppeteers and having the sam...

Vanessa Valliere is a puppeteer, actress, and clown who is known for creating original solo shows which combined her skills of clowning and puppetry. She once worked at Heather Henson's Handmade Puppet Dreams creating a short puppet film called Gut Feelings, which received several awards from showing at several worldwide film festivals. Vanessa went on to do many other shows such as Mucca Pazza, The Life and Times of Terry, and her most recent solo one, LOOK! LOOK! Valliere has also done national and international tours with the company Manual Cinema as Ada in their production of Ada/Ava. That's very impressive that she got to tour the world portraying a character that ended up very popular among many audiences. As well as meeting a member of the Henson family, she also met Grant Baciocco from her interview on the podcast Under the Puppet. Vanessa Valliere should be proud to have accomplished so much throughout her career, starting with Mucca Pazza, a national touring band from...

Johanne Rodrigue is a French-Canadian puppeteer, actress, and founder of a Montreal theatre company called Théâtre de l'Avant-Pays. She was best known for performing Yaya on Wimzie's House (with her voice provided by Jane Woods in the English dubbed version). Johanne also puppeteered on shows such as Kitty Cats and Chicken Minute, the latter with English-speaking puppeteers. Rodrigue got to perform with loads of French-speaking puppeteers such as Sylvie Comtois, Brigitte Brideau, Andre Meunier, and Richard Lalancette, most of which worked on both Kitty Cats and Wimzie's House too. Not only did she perform with puppeteers that speak French, but English ones too such as Trish Leeper, Ronnie Burkett, and Frank Meschkuleit. In addition to performing on shows, she runs the company Théâtre de l'Avant-Pays, which provided the puppets for a show called The Adventures of Virulysses, another show which she puppeteered on. It would appear that Johanne Rodrigue is more familiar wit...

Graham Soul is a Canadian bilingual puppeteer, designer, and author who is known for his freelance work across Quebec and at the Puppets Up festival. Since 1993, he has been a professional puppeteer for both television/film and theatre, performing all different types of puppets from marionettes to hand to tabletop. Graham toured with many French-Canadian theatre companies and also performed in the films Higglety, Pigglety, Pop and Hugo and the Dragon, as well as many commercials. Soul should have worked on Canadian projects for the Henson Company or on Sesame Park. But he was probably much too busy with his theatrical career across Quebec. His most recent show as seen in Puppets Up festivals is called Cuckoo, where he served as a puppeteer, composer, writer, designer, and stage director. Who would've thought that someone as talented as Graham Soul would be a huge success across Canada and maybe even the whole world? You never know when his works will reach other countries. And he d...

Ed Boyle is an Australian puppeteer and director who served as a puppeteer on the Creature Shop mini-series, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars. That was probably his only known Henson project to date as most of his other performances were on outside productions. Some of the other projects Ed did include Walking with Dinosaurs Live, WETA Workshop, Legs on the Wall, and shows at both Theatre of Image and Sydney Theatre Company. As a director, Boyle directed for Circus Oz, Moomba Parade, The Song Room, and St. Martins Youth Arts Theatre, all of which involved theatre work. He also contributed to an Australian company responsible for anything inflatable known as Airena Inflatable Art. As a performer, he got to work with many Muppet puppeteers on Farscape such as Adam Kronenberg, Graeme Haddon, Fiona Gentle, and Alice Osborne, to name a few. Ed Boyle seems to be a good helper at Airena because of how he helps the staff there with anything, like red snakes and chocolate. I don't know how th...

Melvin Campbell is a puppeteer, composer, and writer who is best known for his work at both Sesame Workshop and Spiffy Pictures. Since 2021, he worked as a composer for songs on Sesame Street and also right-handed/assisted Cookie Monster for a Lactaid ad in 2021. Melvin had a larger role at Spiffy Pictures on the show Donkey Hodie, where he performed Cousin Hodie and Rogers the Fish, wrote lots of scripts, and composed many songs. Campbell should be proud to have such musical talents for kids' entertainment since he's been doing terrific and still is. Apart from Sesame Street and Donkey Hodie, he also works at a company known as CampHouse Puppets, LLC where he created, developed, composed, wrote, produced, and directed a series called Fruit Medley, according to his LinkedIn profile. It would appear that his career became successful after graduating from college in 2020, despite the difficulties the world faced that year. Hopefully in the future, Melvin Campbell will get to pupp...

Tyson Ngubeni is a South African comedian, writer, and puppeteer who serves as a script writer and the performer of Jad on Takalani Sesame. He is also known for his character Bob O'Connor, an American newscaster who lives in South Africa, though it's unknown when the role began. As his character, Tyson interviewed Kami and Zuzu about food Amasi within a Takalani social media video. Ngubeni must have had a lot of training to perform Jad (who originated on Ahlan Simsim) by someone from Sesame Street itself. He got to work with other South African puppeteers on that show such as Nozizwe Zulu, Nyanga Tshabalala, and Boitumelo Betty Maretele, to name a few. Still, it must have been challenging for him to puppeteer since he's normally a comedian and on-camera actor. Outside of Takalani, Tyson Ngubeni worked on the Disney+ original Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire and the movie A Royal Surprise. As well as shows, he also appeared in numerous commercials for ESPN, Gumtree, Debonairs Pi...

Brigitte Brideau is a French-Canadian puppeteer and actress who is best known for puppeteering the title character on Wimzie's House. She has also puppeteered on Anne the Banana, Les Belmine, and At Zeno's Farm, three shows that are completely unknown to the public until now. Brigitte got to perform with other Montreal puppeteers over the years like Sylvie Comtois, Richard Lalancette, Andre Meunier and numerous others. Brideau also met Muppet performer/builder James Kroupa of 3/Design Studio, the company that designed and built the puppets on Wimzie's House. She must have been so proud to have been the lead character on such an iconic series that was dubbed in many languages, most notably English. It's a pity her other shows mentioned above aren't as popular as Wimzie. Brigitte Brideau has got to be interviewed someday and maybe share some of the other things she did in her career over the years. The photo above shows her with a puppet hen named Hortense, which can ...

Sylvie Comtois is a French-Canadian puppeteer and puppet builder who is best known for performing on Wimzie's House (Loulou puppetry), Hello Mrs. Cherrywinkle, and Kitty Cats, to name a few. She also worked with Muppet puppeteers Frank Meschkuleit, Mike Petersen, and Matt Ficner, on Toopy and Binoo Vroom Vroom Zoom. Sylvie must have felt honored to work with legendary puppeteers on the iconic franchise of the animated show Toopy and Binoo. Comtois also got to meet James Kroupa, for his company 3/Design Studio designed and built the puppets on Wimzie's House. Outside of television, she got to perform in many theatrical productions over the years such as The Soldier and Death, Heart to Heart, Happy Birthday Willy, and Another World. She even got to serve as part of the set and puppet production team at the Théâtre de l'Œil for over eight years, as well as a consultant for children's TV for many producers. I hope Sylvie Comtois didn't mind that her TV puppet characters...