Ed Christie (born May 20, 1956) is an art director and puppet designer. Christie started out as an intern with Henson Associates in 1978. He graduated from UMass Amherst with a BFA/Education in 1979.
After years of learning Muppet design techniques, and building many of the classic Muppet characters, Christie was promoted to Muppet Supervisor in charge of Sesame Street (1991-1996). He was later promoted to Vice President/NY Muppet Workshop Supervisor (1997-2004) as well as Art Director for Henson on Sesame Street. He also contributed his skills to Henson Licensing and Publishing.
In 2004, Christie left Henson and was contracted by Sesame Workshop where he is currently designing characters for the domestic version of Sesame Street and Sesame Street International. He has designed the Muppet characters for Sesame India, Bangladesh, Russia, Israel, South Africa, Egypt, China, Poland, France, Mexico, Canada, Japan and others. Christie is featured in the film The World According to Sesame Street.
James Maury Henson was an American puppeteer, animator, cartoonist, actor, inventor, and filmmaker who achieved worldwide notability as the creator of the Muppets. Henson was also well-known for creating Fraggle Rock (1983–1987) and as the director of The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986). He was born in Greenville, Mississippi, and raised in both Leland, Mississippi, and University Park, Maryland.
Kermit the Frog is a Muppet character created and originally performed by Jim Henson. Introduced in 1955, Kermit is the pragmatic everyman protagonist of numerous Muppet productions, most notably as the showrunner and host of the sketch comedy television series The Muppet Show and a featured role on Sesame Street, as well as in other television series, feature films, specials, and public service announcements through the years. He served as a mascot of The Jim Henson Company and appeared in various Henson projects until 2004.
The Muppets are an American ensemble cast of puppet characters known for an absurdist, burlesque, and self-referential style of variety-sketch comedy. Created by Jim Henson in 1955, they are the focus of a media franchise that encompasses television, film, music, and other media associated with the characters. Originally owned by the Jim Henson Company for nearly five decades, the franchise was purchased by the Walt Disney Company in 2004.
Sesame Street is an American educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop and was created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. It is known for its images communicated through the use of Jim Henson's Muppets, and includes short films, with humor and cultural references. It premiered on November 10, 1969, to positive reviews, some controversy, and high viewership. It has aired on the United States national public television provider PBS since its debut, with its first run moving to premium channel HBO on January 16, 2016, then its sister streaming service HBO Max in 2020. Sesame Street is one of the longest-running shows in the world.
Big Bird is a Muppet character designed by Jim Henson and built by Kermit Love for the long-running children's television show Sesame Street. An eight-foot two-inch (249 cm) tall bright yellow anthropomorphic bird, he can roller skate, ice skate, dance, swim, sing, write poetry, draw, and ride a unicycle. Despite this wide array of talents, he is prone to frequent misunderstandings, on one occasion even singing the alphabet as one long word, pondering what it could mean. He would refer to grocer Mr. Hooper as "Mr. Looper", among other mispronunciations. He lives in a large nest behind the 123 Sesame Street brownstone and right next to Oscar the Grouch's trash can. He also has a teddy bear named Radar. In Season 46, Big Bird's large nest is now sitting within a small, furnished maple tree, and is no longer hidden by used construction doors.
Kevin Jeffrey Clash is an American puppeteer, director and producer known for puppeteering Elmo on Sesame Street from 1985 to 2012. He also performed puppets for Labyrinth, Dinosaurs, Oobi, and various Muppet productions.
Steven Lawrence Whitmire is an American puppeteer and actor, known primarily for his work on The Muppets and Sesame Street. Beginning his involvement with the Muppets in 1978, Whitmire inherited the roles of Ernie and Kermit the Frog after Jim Henson's death in 1990; he performed the characters until 2014 and 2016, respectively. As part of the Muppet cast, he has appeared in multiple feature films and television series, performing a variety of characters on The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and Fraggle Rock and during such occupations has been employed by The Jim Henson Company, Sesame Workshop, and The Muppets Studio.
The Jim Henson Company is an American entertainment company located in Los Angeles, California. The company is known for its innovations in the field of puppetry, particularly through the creation of Kermit the Frog and the Muppets characters.
David Charles Goelz is an American puppeteer, actor, and puppet builder known for his work with the Muppets. As part of the Muppets' performing cast, Goelz performs Gonzo the Great, as well as Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Waldorf, Zoot and Beauregard, originating on The Muppet Show. Goelz's puppeteering roles also included in Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth. Outside of puppeteering work, he was also the voice of Figment in the Journey into Imagination with Figment attraction at Epcot.
Play with Me Sesame is an American children's television series, created by Sesame Workshop and Nickelodeon for their former joint venture Noggin. It is a spin-off of Sesame Street hosted by Ernie, Bert, Prairie Dawn, and Grover. The series' backgrounds and animated elements were made by Nickelodeon Digital in New York City. Nickelodeon and Sesame developed the show to expand on Sesame Street by directly encouraging young viewers to interact with the characters. To do this, they combined classic Sesame Street sketches with new segments, where the hosts invite preschoolers to join them in games.
Rollie Krewson is a puppet designer and builder known for her work on various Muppet productions. She interned with Jim Henson's company in the mid-1970s. Although she now works primarily as a designer/builder, she began as a performer, doing small bits on The Muppet Show and other projects.
Don't Eat the Pictures: Sesame Street at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a one-hour Sesame Street special that aired on PBS on November 16, 1983. The title comes from a song in the special, "Don't Eat the Pictures", sung by Cookie Monster. It was available as a video tape by Random House in 1987, and it was re-released on VHS by Sony Wonder in 1996 and on DVD in 2011. The special has everybody reprising their roles from the children's television series, Sesame Street. The story takes on getting locked in at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art as they embark on an adventure to find their friend Big Bird, who has gotten lost finding Snuffy. They must stay there until the morning while avoiding a night watchman. The special features the regular human cast of Sesame Street along with several of The Muppets, including Cookie Monster, Telly, Bert & Ernie, The Count, Grover, and Oscar the Grouch. Snuffy also appears, even though his names are revealed to be Mr. Snuffleupagus and Aloysius Snuffleupagus; however, at this point in the show's history, he is still the imaginary friend of Big Bird, never seen by the other characters on Sesame Street.
Sesame Street international co-productions are adaptations of the American educational children's television series Sesame Street but tailored to the countries in which they are produced. Shortly after the debut of Sesame Street in the United States in 1969, television producers, teachers, and officials of several countries approached the show's producers and the executives of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), renamed Sesame Workshop (SW) in 2000, about the possibility of airing international versions of Sesame Street. Creator Joan Ganz Cooney hired former CBS executive Michael Dann to field offers to produce versions of the show in other countries.
Michael Kingsbury Frith is a British artist and television producer. He is the former Executive Vice-President and Creative Director of The Jim Henson Company. His contributions to Muppet projects have been extensive and varied.
Tim Lagasse is an American director, puppeteer and puppet designer. He has worked on films and television programs for Sesame Workshop, Nickelodeon, Disney XD, and HBO. He is known for playing the title character on Noggin's Oobi, and Crash on Disney XD's Crash & Bernstein.
A wide variety of characters have appeared on the American children's television series Sesame Street. Many of the characters are Muppets, which are puppets made in Jim Henson's distinctive puppet-creation style. Most of the non-Muppet characters are human characters, but there are many characters that are animated.
Cheryl Lee Henson has served as the President of the Jim Henson Foundation since 1992. She is a philanthropist and supporter of puppetry arts and artists, and serves as a board member of The Jim Henson Company. She was honored in 2010 at the LaMama Gala, and in 2011, she won the New Victory Arts Award for her leadership in puppetry.
Carolyn Wilcox, known as Caroly Wilcox, was an American theatre professional, best known for her work with the Muppets, on television programs including Sesame Street,The Muppet Show, and Fraggle Rock, and in The Muppet Movie, The Muppets Take Manhattan, and other films.
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