PUPPETMASTER RICK LYON

As a child in Rochester, NY, Rick Lyon was fascinated by the puppets he saw on television: Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose on Captain Kangaroo, Shari Lewis’ Lambchop, the hand puppets on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and Jim Henson’s Muppets, that wild bunch of creatures appearing on variety shows like The Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace.

When Sesame Street began, Lyon was 11 – way beyond the age of the target audience – but he desperately wanted to make puppets that looked like the soft, pliable Jim Henson creations. The first puppets he ever made were from items he found around the house: socks, paper bags, Styrofoam, paper cups. Lyon found an old purple towel in his parents’ house, roughed out a crude puppet pattern, added some cardboard eyes and fabric hands, and called it Percy – a character he still uses today!

While studying theater at Penn State University, Lyon decided to make puppetry his profession. After college, he did a one-semester program in puppetry at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center as well as coursework at the Institute of Professional Puppetry Arts, both in Connecticut. He also studied at the Institut Internationale de la Marionnette in France. It was while he was studying in Connecticut in 1986 that he first met and auditioned for Jim Henson, and eventually he did his first project with the Muppets in 1987. Later that year he started working on Sesame Street, where he stayed for the next 15 years, until AVENUE Q called.

When songwriters Jeff Marx and Bobby Lopez started writing AVENUE Q, they asked Lyon to design all the puppets in addition to performing Nicky and Trekkie Monster. In the early stages, Lyon pulled existing puppets from his stock and adapted them to AVENUE Q characters. The first time he created puppets from scratch was for the staged reading at the York Theatre in May 2000. After that, Lyon continued to revise the puppet designs to fit the changes in the script.

For the off-Broadway run at the Vineyard Theatre, Lyon built the puppets at his in-home studio. But when the show moved to Broadway, he started renting a 2,000-square-foot workshop on the upper floor of a factory building in New Jersey. Lyon estimates that each puppet takes 100 to 120 man-hours to make. Initially, as many as ten craftspeople were helping to construct the puppets for Broadway. In one busy stretch in 2005, Lyon and his team made more than 60 puppets – the originals for the Las Vegas production and some replacements for Broadway – in just four months.

Each puppet is made from scratch. Much of the fabric, like the furs for Kate Monster and Trekkie Monster, is custom-ordered in bulk, and the skin fabrics of humanoid puppets like Rod and Nicky are all custom-dyed in Lyon’s workshop. Factory-made eyeballs aren’t good enough – every eye is individually crafted. Kate Monster wears wigs made from actual human hair. Lyon and his team construct most of the puppets’ costumes themselves as well.

Other projects have included puppets for Comedy Central’s Crank Yankers, puppets and props for Nickelodeon’s Stick Stickly, television pilots for VH1, Nickelodeon, and PBS, numerous industrials and home videos, and the live national tour of PBS’s The Magic School Bus.

When time permits, Lyon performs live shows with his troupe, The Lyon Puppets. Performances by the group feature a colorful cast of bright, eye-catching puppets, which he has designed and built himself. He also writes the scripts and composes the music for the shows. He arranges, performs and records the music with collaborators John Lynch and Jim Ream in the guise of the band “The Ripmeisters.”

With more than 25 years of professional experience in television, film, and theater, Lyon gratefully acknowledges the inspiration and encouragement of the late Jim Henson, and is proud to have supplied all the puppets for the productions of AVENUE Q on Broadway, in London, Las Vegas, and now the national tour.

Avenue Q – Minglie Chen, Rod, Nicky, Robert McClure