Scott Brooker is a British puppeteer, puppet maker, puppet designer.
Scott Brooker has many television, theatre and film credits as a puppet maker and puppeteer. One of his most well known work was for Spitting Image , where he spent thirteen years as head puppet maker. [1] After leaving Spitting Image, Brooker worked with Jim Henson's Creature Shop as a designer and fabricator working on many of their productions, including Alice in Wonderland and Five Children and It. At the Creature Shop Brooker also helped design the Monkey from PG [2] [3] and for Disney Channel's The Raoul Show. Brooker has also designed many theatre productions, most notably David Wood's Guess How Much I Love You . [4] and A Christmas Carol . As well as making puppets for commercials, films, television and theatre, Brooker also designed the lamb puppet to promote CLIC Sargent, [3] a children cancer on charity. Brooker has also performed additional puppetry for the character of Rattus Rattus from Horrible Histories . Brooker assisted John Eccleston (Rattus' main operator) in operating Rattus for all episodes of Gory Games, a Horrible Histories game show spin off. Brooker is currently part of "Puppet Shack", a small organisation of puppet professionals (including Nigel Plaskitt, Guy Stevens, Paul Jomain and Jonathan Saville), who have worked for many TV, film and theatre productions. He has also made puppets for the BBC programme That Puppet Game Show and recently designed puppets and creatures for The Harry Hill Movie .
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.
Steve Nallon is a British actor, writer, voice artist and impressionist. Nallon began his career as a stand-up performer on the northern club circuit in the 1970s. He is known for his work as a voice artist on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image and for impersonating Margaret Thatcher on television throughout her time as Prime Minister of the UK (1979–1990). In his career Steve Nallon has performed a number of roles and characters as an actor and as a voice artist in theatre, film, television and radio.
Louise Gold is an English puppeteer, actress and singer whose career has spanned more than four decades. She is best known for her work as a puppeteer on television and for roles in musical theatre in the West End.
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a marionettist. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms of theatres or entertainment venues. They have also been used in films and on television. The attachment of the strings varies according to its character or purpose.
Avenue Q is a musical comedy featuring puppets and human actors with music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx and book by Jeff Whitty. It won Best Musical, Book, and Score at the 2004 Tony Awards. The show's format is a parody of PBS's Sesame Street, but its content involves adult-oriented themes. It has been praised for its approach to themes of racism, homosexuality and internet pornography.
William Todd-Jones is a Welsh puppeteer, puppet designer, performer, director, movement consultant and writer for film, television and theatre in the UK and abroad.
Don Austen is an English puppeteer. He began his career in 1981 at Cannon Hill Park's puppet theatre in his hometown of Birmingham. Austen joined the Jim Henson Creature Shop in 1986 for the movie Labyrinth. He was a puppeteer for other blockbuster movies including Santa Claus: The Movie (1985), The Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Bear (L'ours) (1988), The Witches (1990), and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999).
The Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre is a building in Central Park, Manhattan, New York City, southeast of the Delacorte Theater near West Drive and 79th Street. It was imported to the U.S. in 1876 as Sweden’s exhibit for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The Swedish architecture and craftsmanship of the structure, suggestive of a model schoolhouse, caught the eye of Frederick Law Olmsted, who brought it to Central Park in 1877.
Nigel Plaskitt is an English actor, puppeteer, producer, and stage and television director.
The Ferals was an Australian children's comedy television series which screened on the ABC from 1994 to 1995. It was created by Wendy Gray and Claire Henderson and featured a mixture of people and animal puppets known as the "Ferals". It was lauded for its irreverent humour and distinctive characters, some of which featured on other ABC programming. Garth Frost was responsible for the puppet design. In the UK, the show aired on satellite television via Nickelodeon UK.
The Long Christmas Ride Home is a one-act play written by Paula Vogel. It dramatises a road trip by two parents and their three young children to visit grandparents for Christmas dinner, and the emotional turmoil that they undergo. A significant element of the production schema is a Western contemporary employment of bunraku.
Horrible Histories is an educational entertainment franchise encompassing many media including books, magazines, audio books, stage shows, TV shows, and more.
The Chiodo Brothers are an American trio of sibling special effects artists, specializing in clay modeling, creature creation, stop motion and animatronics. Known for their film Killer Klowns from Outer Space and creating puppets and effects for films such as Critters, Ernest Scared Stupid, and Team America: World Police, the Chiodo brothers created the claymation sequence for the Large Marge scene from Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and the stop-motion elements in the North Pole scenes from Elf. They also created the mouse dioramas featured in the 2010 film Dinner for Schmucks, as well as the stop-motion Stone Age creatures in the Cup Noodles ads from the mid-90s and were puppeteers on The Thundermans. In addition, they produced a puppet segment for the episode of The Simpsons "The Fight Before Christmas" (2010). The band Chiodos was originally named "The Chiodos Bros." after them, before modifying their title slightly.
A puppet is an object, often resembling a human, animal or mythical figure, that is animated or manipulated by a person called a puppeteer. The puppeteer uses movements of their hands, arms, or 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 often speaks in the voice of the character of the puppet, and then synchronizes the movements of the puppet's mouth with this spoken part. The actions, gestures and spoken parts acted out by the puppeteer with the puppet are typically used in storytelling. Puppetry is a very ancient form of theatre which dates back to the 5th century BC in Ancient Greece. There are many different varieties of puppets, and they are made from a wide range of materials, depending on their form and intended use. They range from very simple in construction and operation to very complex.
Jim Henson's Creature Shop is a special/visual effects company founded in 1979 by puppeteer Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets. The company is based out of Burbank, California, United States.
Horrible Histories: Gory Games is a children's game show, co-produced by Citrus Television and Lion Television for CBBC, that debuted in 2011. It is a spin-off of hit children's sketch comedy Horrible Histories and is a product of the same creative team.
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.
Horrible Histories is a British children's live-action historical and musical sketch comedy television series, based on the bestselling book series of the same name by Terry Deary. The show was produced for CBBC by Lion Television with Citrus Television and ran from 2009 to 2014 for five series of thirteen half-hour episodes, with additional one-off seasonal and Olympic specials.
Anthony Asbury is an American actor and puppeteer. He has been working as a puppeteer for over three decades.
Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge is an American reality television game show on the Syfy cable network. It premiered on March 25, 2014 and ended on May 13, 2014.