Mary McClung is a puppeteer, costume designer, and professor at West Virginia University who teaches both theatrical skills to students. She started off working at Animax Designs in 1994, doing projects for Disney, Sesame Workshop, and Universal Studios. Mary got to work with Chuck Fawcett, Jeff Conover, Kim Snodgrass, and other performers who worked at Animax during that time. McClung also designed costumes for The Beggar's Opera which won an award in 2002 and later designed costumes for the WVU dance concert piece known as The Elementals. It's amazing that a former puppet company employee would become a professor to teach these skills to students interested in that area. In 2015, she inherited leadership of the WVU Puppet Mobile from her retired mentor Joann Siegrist, bringing theatrical performances to West Virginia communities for over 30 years. Mary McClung also toured elementary schools across the state, performing shows which she saw as educational and professional training. She's still working at WVU today teaching costume design and puppetry to students. She even wrote two books published by Routledge called Mask Making Techniques and Foam Patterning and Construction Techniques, both are about puppet and costume making. Pity Mary doesn't perform nor appear on TV any more than she used to, her latest appearance was in a documentary called The Last Puppet Show. At least McClung will teach students how to costume design and puppeteer like her so her legacy will go on for the near future. And she did work with people who worked for Sesame Workshop prior to becoming a university professor. That's what I call professionalism. Mary McClung, you're a fantastic professor and you've done well with Animax earlier in your career. Keep on teaching students your skills so that they'll become professional puppet performers like you and teach the same skills to their students. You never know when your skills will be passed down to student after student, which makes things even better. You're a genius Mary. Those are some sweet skills of yours McClung!
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