Johanne Rodrigue

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 with productions produced in Quebec including Hello Mrs. Cherrywinkle (later seasons), Iglou glou, Zeno the Little Pig, and many others. All of that info came from an article written by the performer herself on the site Marionnet.CA, a French-Canadian puppet website. I'll bet she was excited when working on Chicken Minute with a few performers from the original Fraggle Rock. Hopefully, Johanne is still performing shows and working with her company Théâtre de l'Avant-Pays on other productions, whatever they are. Maybe Rodrigue is still keeping in touch with her co-workers from Wimzie's House since the show ended in 1996. If there's a possibility, perhaps there will be a Wimzie's House reunion for an anniversary, but that will probably never happen in this case. But no matter, Yaya will be her best-known character. Johanne Rodrigue, you have really impressed Quebec with your puppetry skills as well as making your own self article. Keep on performing and acting so that the world will know more about you than ever. But the world will now know your other projects too, not just Wimzie's House. You're the cat's meow Johanne. Ta Rodrigue!

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