On screen, puppeteers should be an afterthought. Their job is to make the audience forget that they exist – that those felted creatures on screen are living unstrung.
When you’re a child, that illusion is seamless – almost irrelevant, even. The characters on Sesame Street, The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock are so engaging and lifelike the very idea that they are being manipulated by some Oz-like entity is simply inconceivable.