A puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object, called a puppet, to create the illusion that the puppet is alive. The puppet is often shaped like a human, animal, or legendary creature. The puppeteer may be visible to or hidden from the audience. A puppeteer can operate a puppet indirectly by the use of strings, rods, wires, electronics or directly by his or her own hands placed inside the puppet or holding it externally or any other part of the body- such as the legs. Some puppet styles require two or more puppeteers to work together to create a single puppet character.
Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets – inanimate objects, often resembling some type of human or animal figure, that are animated or manipulated by a human called a puppeteer. Such a performance is also known as a puppet production. The script for a puppet production is called a puppet play. Puppeteers use movements from hands and arms to control devices such as rods or strings to move the body, head, limbs, and in some cases the mouth and eyes of the puppet. The puppeteer sometimes speaks in the voice of the character of the puppet, while at other times they perform to a recorded soundtrack.
Children's Fairyland, U.S.A. is an amusement park, located in Oakland, California, on the shores of Lake Merritt. It was one of the earliest "themed" amusement parks in the United States. Fairyland includes 10 acres (4.0 ha) of play sets, small rides, and animals. The park is also home to the Open Storybook Puppet Theater, the oldest continuously operating puppet theater in the United States.
Oobi is an American children's television series created by Josh Selig for the Noggin channel. The show's concept is based on a training method used by puppeteers, in which they use their hands and a pair of glass eyes instead of a full puppet. The main character is a bare hand puppet named Oobi. The show's first season was a series of two-minute shorts. For its second and third seasons, it became a long-form series, with episodes lasting 13 minutes each. The show premiered in 2000, and the last new episode aired on February 11, 2005.
Rainbow is a British children's television series, created by Pamela Lonsdale, which ran from 12 November 1972 until 6 March 1992 when Thames Television lost its ITV franchise to Carlton Television. The series was revived by HTV on 10 January 1994 until 24 March 1997, in two different formats from the original Thames series, with differing cast members.
Nikki Tilroe was an American actress and puppeteer. She is best known for her work as the "Mime Lady" on the children's television series Today's Special. She also operated Muppets on the TV show Fraggle Rock and played "Beaver" on Cucumber.
Toby Froud is an English-American artist, special effects designer, puppeteer, filmmaker and performer. He rose to prominence for his role as the baby wished away to the goblins in the 1986 Jim Henson film Labyrinth, later becoming a puppeteer, sculptor and fabricator for film, television and theatre. He wrote and directed the 2014 fantasy short film Lessons Learned. He served as the design supervisor of the 2019 streaming television series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.
Alice Catherine Dinnean is an American puppeteer, voice actress and creative writer who works at The Jim Henson Company. Dinnean has performed on many children's television shows such as The Puzzle Place, Sesame Street, Bear in the Big Blue House, Cousin Skeeter, Jim Henson's Pajanimals, Sid the Science Kid and Jack's Big Music Show. She also did work on various non-Muppet productions such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.
Toby Philpott is an English puppeteer best known for his work in motion picture animatronics during the 1980s in such films as The Dark Crystal and Return of the Jedi. Born into a family of entertainers, Philpott dropped out of school and traveled the world during the 1960s, squatting in various locations and surviving off money he earned from his work as a street performer, which included juggling, fire eating, magic shows, clowning and acrobatics. He began his film career after Jim Henson personally selected Philpott to work on the 1982 fantasy film The Dark Crystal, in which he worked side-by-side with Henson.
David Alan Barclay is a British puppeteer who had worked on some projects of The Jim Henson Company. He has been at the cutting edge of animatronic puppetry since 1979. Barclay, who hails from London, is a Master Puppeteer, Animatronic Designer and Supervisor, a CG key frame Animator, and Director and Producer of animatronic and animation projects for film and television.
Farooq Qaiser was a Pakistani artist, newspaper columnist, TV show director, puppeteer, script writer, and voice actor. He was known as the creator of the fictional puppet character Uncle Sargam introduced in 1976 in children's television show Kaliyan. Farooq was also a cartoonist, newspaper columnist and wrote for the newspaper Daily Nai Baat in Lahore and under the pen name "Meethay Karelay".
Bradford Cody "Brad" Williams was an American puppeteer, designer and teacher. He died from injuries sustained in a car accident at the age of 42.
Kenya Institute of Puppet Theatre also known as KIPT is a Kenyan non-governmental and non-profit technical advisory and management community based theatre institute, which was founded in 2007.
Sherlock Holmes or Puppet Entertainment Sherlock Holmes is a Japanese puppetry television series written by Kōki Mitani and produced and broadcast by NHK. The puppets for the series were designed by Bunta Inoue. The first series of 18 episodes was broadcast on Sundays from 12 October 2014 to 15 February 2015 by NHK Educational TV (ETV); the first six episodes were broadcast by NHK General TV (GTV) in March and August 2014. A special programme was broadcast on 5 October 2014 while a "Sherlock Holmes Award" was broadcast on 28 December 2014. Each episode was rebroadcast on successive Fridays. The programme won the Japan Sherlock Holmes Award on 22 March 2015.
Suresh Dutta is an Indian puppet artist, theatre personality and the founder of Calcutta Puppet Theatre, a Kolkata-based theatre group dedicated to puppetry. Born in Faridpur, in the undivided Bengal of the British India, he trained art under Phani Bhushan, a Jatra exponent, and Kathakali under Balakrishna Menon. He has also learnt fusion style of danceform from maestro Uday Shankar. He also learnt Bharatanatyam and Manipuri before moving to Russia, under a scholarship in 1962, to train in puppetry under the Russian puppeteer, Sergey Obraztsov.
Nina Simonovich-Efimova was a Russian artist, puppet designer and one of the first professional Russian puppeteers. Together with her husband Ivan Efimov she founded the tradition of Soviet puppet theater, acting as the driving force behind the Efimovs' presentations.
Violet Philpott was an English puppeteer and author. She was involved in the production of The Telegoons by making marionette figures and created the character Zippy for the children's television show Rainbow in 1972 but left production after one series because of a back injury. She toured the United Kingdom giving performances until she stopped in 2009 after being afflicted with dementia.
In the late 1980s, the African Research and Educational Puppetry Program (AREPP) founded "Puppets Against AIDS", a traveling puppet show that visited African villages and cities to encourage audience members to use condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS transmission.
Mary Phipps Putnam Churchill was an American puppeteer, educator, and entrepreneur. Her puppet troupe, The Cranberry Puppets, entertained children for 25 years with witty feminist adaptations of folktales. Churchill was founder and director of Puppet Showplace Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Helen Haiman Joseph was an American puppeteer and author. Known as the "grandmother of American puppetry", she published plays, books, along with puppeteering nationally.
