James Maury Henson was an American puppeteer, animator, actor, 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).
Kermit the Frog is a Muppet character created in 1955 and originally performed by Jim Henson. 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. He has appeared in other television series, feature films, specials, and public service announcements through the years. He also 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, surrealist, 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 children's films, television, music, and other media associated with the characters. Owned by the Jim Henson Company for nearly five decades, the characters and franchise were acquired by the Walt Disney Company in 2004.
Fraggle Rock is a children's musical fantasy comedy puppet television series about interconnected societies of Muppet creatures, created by Jim Henson.
Labyrinth is a 1986 musical fantasy film directed by Jim Henson with George Lucas as executive producer. Based on conceptual designs by Brian Froud, the film was written by Terry Jones, and many of its characters are played by puppets produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. The film stars Jennifer Connelly as 16-year-old Sarah and David Bowie as Jareth, the Goblin King. In Labyrinth, Sarah embarks on a quest to reach the center of an enormous, otherworldly maze to rescue her infant half-brother Toby, whom she wished away to Jareth.
Brian Henson is an American puppeteer, filmmaker, actor and the chairman of The Jim Henson Company. He is the son of puppeteers Jim and Jane Henson.
The Jim Henson Company, formerly known as Muppets, Inc., Henson Associates, Inc., and Jim Henson Productions, Inc.; commonly referred to as Henson, 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.
Sam and Friends is an American live-action and puppet sketch comedy television series and a lead-in to The Tonight Show created by puppeteer Jim Henson and his eventual wife Jane Nebel. It was aired live twice daily as a local series in Washington, D.C., on WRC-TV in black and white, and later color, on weeknights from May 9, 1955, to December 15, 1961. However, most of the original episodes were never recorded, and are considered lost. A few surviving episodes can be viewed at the Paley Center for Media but many can also be found on video websites like YouTube, such as those digitally archived by The Jim Henson Company. Some have been documented by either the Henson Archives or newspaper articles published while the show was still on air.
Digital puppetry is the manipulation and performance of digitally animated 2D or 3D figures and objects in a virtual environment that are rendered in real-time by computers. It is most commonly used in filmmaking and television production but has also been used in interactive theme park attractions and live theatre.
Squonk Opera is a group of interdisciplinary performing artists from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Led by artistic directors Jackie Dempsey and Steve O'Hearn, Squonk Opera formed in 1992 and has created fifteen distinct shows and performed in over 250 venues in 36 of the United States. Squonk Opera has been touring internationally since 2003 - to Scotland, Belgium, Germany and twice to South Korea, where they opened both the Busan International Performing Arts Festival and the World Music Theater Festival. In 2017, Squonk was one of the first western acts to perform at the Qingdao International Beer Festival in Qingdao, China. Over 1,000,000 people have seen Squonk around the world, and reviews include “a multimedia troupe of infinite jest with an imagination to match” from The New York Times, "insane majesty" from The Scotsman, and "...surreal and poetic" from USA Today.
Tobias Matthew Froud is an English-American artist, special effects designer, puppeteer, filmmaker, and performer. He rose to prominence for his role as the baby who was wished away to the goblins in the 1986 Jim Henson film Labyrinth. He became a puppeteer, sculptor, and fabricator for film, television, and theatre. He wrote and directed the 2014 fantasy short film Lessons Learned. He was the design supervisor of the 2019 streaming television series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.
Wendy Froud is an American doll-artist, sculptor, puppet-maker, and writer. She is best known for her work fabricating Yoda for the 1980 film Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, for which she has been called "the mother of Yoda", and creatures for the Jim Henson films The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.
Genevieve Sterling Buechner is a Canadian actress. She is known for her television roles such as Tamara Adama on the Syfy series Caprica, Fox on The CW series The 100, and Madison on the Lifetime series UnREAL.
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 in Hollywood, California, United States.
Gonzo is a Muppet character from the sketch comedy television series The Muppet Show, known for his eccentric passion for stunt performance. Aside from his trademark enthusiasm for performance art, another defining trait of Gonzo is the ambiguity of his species, which has become a running gag in the franchise. He has been considered to be of various origins, including a Frackle in his debut appearance in The Great Santa Claus Switch, an extraterrestrial in Muppets from Space or an avian creature.
Kirk R. Thatcher is an American writer, producer, television and film director, an Internet video director, and a production designer.
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is an American fantasy television series produced, made and owned by The Jim Henson Company. It is a prequel to the 1982 Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal that explores the world of Thra created for the original film. It follows the story of three Gelflings: Rian, Deet, and Brea, as they journey together on a quest to unite the Gelfling clans to rise against the tyrannical Skeksis and save their planet Thra from a destructive blight known as the Darkening. The series premiered on August 30, 2019, to critical acclaim. In September 2020, it was announced that the series had been cancelled after one season.
Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock is an American children's musical fantasy comedy puppet television series about interconnected societies of creatures. It is a reboot of the 1983 series Fraggle Rock by Jim Henson. The first season was released on Apple TV+ on January 21, 2022. It was renewed for a second season which was released on March 29, 2024.
Lyle Conway is an actor, puppeteer, and designer, best known for his work with Jim Henson on The Dark Crystal (1982) and his work on Little Shop of Horrors through the creation of the Audrey II puppet.
