Retired: Shelter from the Storm continued
Bob Conrad, stage name for Conrad Woyce, announced that he is retiring after 60 years as a puppeteer. Born in
1940, he graduated from Lyndhurst High School in 1958, already a puppeteer with credits on WABD-TV’s Star Time Kids. Bob is a person of many talents. He is an author of several books, a ventriloquist, a magician, and a musician, who has taught guitar and banjo and ran a music store. He was a regular contributor to the magazine Laugh Makers. Bob married his wife, Nancy, in 1968. At their home in East Rutherford, New Jersey, they have nurtured 10 of their own children and adopted five children. Bob developed more than a dozen shows for schools and even more programs for libraries, senior centers, and preschools. He has an avid interest in nature and history and especially enjoys programs where he gets to impersonate Abraham Lincoln, using a show he inherited from Doug Anderson. Bob’s Facebook page shows his strong interest in entertainment history, with his numerous birthday tributes to performers. Bob is a long-time member of Puppeteers of America and contributed five technical articles to Puppetry Journal; in 2013, he was the subject of a profile by Bob Abdou.
http://www.conradproductions.net/
index.html
Bob Conrad from the cover of Laugh Makers magazine. Photo courtesy of Bob Conrad
Bob Flanagan and two puppets from the Drama Desk Award nominated production of Emperor Jones. Photo: courtesy of Bob Flanagan
based designer, puppet builder, and prop maker who just announced that he is retiring. He studied art at Pratt Institute. He worked for the Jim Henson workshop in the 1980s and worked on seasons 17 and 18 of Sesame Street. Bob founded Den Design Studio, which designed and built puppets, props, masks, and costumes. His studio built props for many seasons of Saturday Night Live and most of the late-night hosts, including Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver. He has frequently worked with the New York–based Irish Repertory Theatre, designing puppets for Beowulf (2005), The Hairy Ape (2006), The Emperor Jones (2009; Drama Desk nomination), and Banished Children of Eve (2010). In a Playbill online interview in 2017, Olivia Clement asked him if he liked the hectic pace. Bob said, “I do. There’s never a dull moment, and it stretches you. Once, SNL called on a Wednesday night at around 10 p.m. and said, ‘We need two live- sized camel puppets.’ You say, ‘sure,’ and then think, ‘What the hell did I just agree to?’ It’s nerve racking, and there isn’t too much sleep when that happens.”
Robert “Bob” Flanagan, is a Brooklyn-
company, The Independent Eye, in 1974 after working with Theatre X in Milwaukee. In June 2020, they announced that The Independent Eye was ending after 46 years. With 4,000 performances in 38 states and 104 productions of all sorts, they reluctantly ended touring. From their start in Milwaukee, the couple moved to Chicago, then to Lancaster, Pennsylvania (1977–1992), then to Philadelphia (1992–1998), where they had a small theater; they settled in Sebastopol, California, in 1999. In the early 1960s, Conrad met Elizabeth, an actress, a puppeteer, a composer, and an accomplished pianist. Conrad said, “Some of our best work over the years has been a mix of humans, masks, puppets, and shadows: Macbeth [1979-1995], Medea/Sacrament, The Shadow Saver, Rash Acts, Alice in Wonder.” More recent theater works include Descent of the Goddess Inanna (2008), Tempest (2009), Frankenstein (2011), and King Lear (2015). In 2018, Conrad’s “realistic fantasy,” Galahad’s Fool, was published as an e-book.
Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller founded their theater
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a puppeteer for 30 years, has announced her retirement. Susan was born in New Jersey. She became hooked on puppets in Chicago. For most of the 1990s, she worked with her mentor, David Herzog. She specialized in cabaret or variety-style marionettes. In 1999, to be closer to family members, she left Chicago for Cedar Mountain, North Carolina, and founded her company, Mountain Marionettes. Susan is a long-time member of Puppeteers of America and active in the leadership of the Southeast Region. She directed the 2006 regional puppet festival in Asheville, North Carolina. Her puppetry led her to more involvement in writing, illustrating, and storytelling. Susan continues to be involved with management of The Sassy Goose, a private mountain retreat, a lovely mountain getaway that can be rented for small conferences. She says on her website, “I’m a puppeteer and always will be even though I am retired.”
Susan VandeWeghe,
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