Rick Lyon is a
puppeteer,
actor, and
puppet designer and builder originally from
Rochester, New York, who has worked for the
Jim Henson Company as one of the operators of
Big Bird. He appeared on
Broadway originating the roles of
Trekkie Monster, Nicky, the blue Bad Idea Bear, and other characters in the
Tony Award-winning musical
Avenue Q, a musical for which he designed and created all of the puppets. In the fall of 2005 he reprised his roles in the production of the show in
Las Vegas for eight months before returning to the Broadway cast. Rick was a puppeteer on
Sesame Street for 15 seasons, from 1987 to 2002. He also worked with Nickelodeon on the
Stick Stickly project. He was a lead puppeteer for the first season of
Comedy Central's television program
Crank Yankers. Lyon's company , maintains a large permanent workshop outside New York City in New Jersey. In addition to building all of the Broadway and Las Vegas
Avenue Q puppets, has built puppets for the original
West End production of
Avenue Q in London, the US national tour, and international productions in Brazil, Mexico, Australia, and Switzerland. Rick frequently coaches actors in puppetry for productions of
Avenue Q for which he provides puppets.
He studied theater at
Penn State University and
puppetry at the
Institute of Professional Puppetry Arts in
Connecticut and the......
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