Board of Directors

2022 board of directors

Dr. Leigh Lafosse - president

www.rainbowridgestudio.com
Leigh is an active duty military musician, serving the last 15 years as a clarinetist in the U.S. Army Band "Pershing's Own". She received her undergrad and masters from Texas Tech University and her doctoral degree from Indiana University, Bloomington. Actively involved in education and community, she served as Association Director of the MD/DC chapters of Odyssey of the Mind, a volunteer for Ameri-Corps Reading Partners in DC, a head of family for the THREAD outreach program in Baltimore, the education coordinator for the Del Ray Artisans, and as a volunteer for STEAM onward in Fort Washington. As a puppeteer, Leigh devised, created, built, choreographed, and produced a two-person puppet production of "Hamilton", that Lin-Manual Miranda sent a personal letter of regret for not being able to attend. She was also responsible for developing a puppet feature for the 2019 U.S. Army Birthday Ball, which included caricatured puppets of the Army Senior Leaders; an event that required her to escort the puppets through Pentagon security for likeness approval by the Secretary of the Army.

Sarah Olmsted Thomas -
vice president

https://www.alexandolmsted.com/
Sarah Olmsted Thomas is a fifth generation performing artist. She is half of Alex and Olmsted, an internationally acclaimed puppetry duo that was awarded 2017 and 2020 Jim Henson Foundation Grants as well as the 2020 State Independent Artist Award for Performing Arts from the Maryland State Arts Council. Alex and Olmsted has toured the Festival of Wonder in Denmark, the Puppet Festival Chuncheon in South Korea, the Festival de Casteliers in Montréal, and Symphony Space in New York City, among others. Since 2012, Sarah has also been a company member with Happenstance Theater with whom she has devised 10 full-length productions (31 Helen Hayes Award Nominations, 5 wins). Sarah completed an apprenticeship with Bread and Puppet Theater, was awarded a Lisa Simon Scholarship to attend the 2017 National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, and has been honored with 2 Helen Hayes Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress by Theatre Washington. She is a proud NCPG member since 2018. B.A., Sarah Lawrence College.

Heidi Rugg - secretary

www.barefootpuppets.com
www.heidirugg.com
Heidi Rugg is a Richmond-based puppeteer, puppet builder, playwright, director, educator, and founder of Barefoot Puppet Theatre, now entering its 25th year of touring! Working with a wide-variety of puppetry styles, she designs, builds, and writes for puppet theatre. She is passionate about puppet mechanisms, STEAM, playwriting for puppetry, and puppetry’s applications in education. Heidi is on the teaching artists roster for the Virginia Commission for the Arts and has worked with all ages. She has a special passion for arts integration and has received extensive training through the Kennedy Center, Partner in the Arts, and is a current Wolf Trap Teaching Artist. In 2005, she was awarded an UNIMA-Citation of Excellence for her original work, “Galapagos George.” She has received grant support for her work from the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Arts, The Virginia Commission for the Arts, Puppeteers of America, and the Jim Henson Foundation. Heidi holds a Bachelor’s of Interdisciplinary Studies in Arts Integration from Virginia Commonwealth University with a minor in Art History. She and her husband, Sam Rugg, reside in Richmond, Virginia.

Vanessa Spring-Frank - treasurer

vanessaspringfrank.com
Vanessa has been a proud member of the NCPG board since the beginning of 2020. As a board member at large, she has helped to double the NCPG membership with the success of the 2020 and 2021 National Capital Puppetry Festivals. Vanessa is a freelance props artisan and puppet builder in the D.C. area working at Theaters such as Imagination Stage, Baltimore Fringe, Round House Theater Center, and the John F. Kennedy Center, among others. She has worked to focus her career on Theater for Young Audiences through the lens of Puppetry after being accepted to the 2016 National Puppetry Festival at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center where she fell in love with the limitless possibilities that puppetry has to offer story telling. Since then, she has used puppetry in her art forms through creating large scale pyrotechnic effigy sculptures for festivals and rod puppets in theatrical settings.

Dr. Schroeder Cherry

https://www.facebook.com/schroeder.cherry
https://www.instagram.com/schroeder.cherry/
Dr. Schroeder Cherry is a puppeteer and visual artist based in Baltimore, MD. Working with sculpted rod puppets and wood cutouts that he designs, Schroeder has performed original shows with puppets in museums, libraries, schools, and cultural centers across the United States. Performances include: "Can You Spell Harlem?," "The Land of Primary Colors," "Underground Railroad, Not A Subway," "Tuskegee Airmen," "How The Sun Came To The Sky," and "Children's Civil Rights Crusade." Dr. Cherry was recently featured on the front cover of the Puppetry Journal, the official magazine of the Puppeteers of America. During COVID, he and his puppets began making appearances on Instagram, commenting on everyday events

Alex Vernon

www.alexandolmsted.com/
Alex Vernon is an actor, puppeteer, designer and automata engineer. He has been a board member of the National Capital Puppetry Guild for 3 years. You may recognize him as one of the hosts of the Guild's bi-monthly Potpourri performances, hosting and running tech for the National Capital Puppetry Festivals online, or performing as one half of the puppetry duo Alex and Olmsted. He's a big fan of puppetry mechanisms and learning how to use new tools to expand the building possibilities of the artform. In 2010, Alex made his living in NYC as a street artist by cutting freehand silhouettes in Union Square Park. In 2015, he was hired by the American Visionary Art Museum to repair and service the automata in their permanent Cabaret Mechanical Theatre exhibit. In 2017, the National Puppetry Conference awarded Alex the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center Scholarship during which time he studied Mechanisms with Jim Kroupa and Marionette Construction with Jim Rose. Since 2012, Alex has been a company member with Washington, D.C.’s award-winning Happenstance Theater with whom he has created 10 original productions. With Happenstance, Alex was nominated twice as Outstanding Lead Actor for the Helen Hayes Awards. In the Spring of 2020 Alex taught as an adjunct professor of Puppetry Arts at the University of Maryland, College Park: Jim Henson’s alma mater.

Sam Rugg

www.barefootpuppets.com
Sam has been involved with puppetry since 1996 when he met puppeteer (and wife-to-be), Heidi Rugg. Originally from the Windy City, Sam is known for his work behind-the-scenes with sound systems, stage design, terrible puns, and set construction with Barefoot Puppet Theatre. Sam brings a knowledge and love of power tools to the puppetry scene along with a deep appreciation for all forms of performance. He is in constant search of the perfect touring vehicle. He and Heidi have two daughters and reside in Richmond, Virginia.

Sam has served on the board of NCPG for over about twenty years and retains much institutional memory for the organization.

Michael Lamason

http://blackcherrypuppettheater.weebly.com/
Michael Lamason is a cofounder and current Executive Director of Baltimore’s Black Cherry Puppet Theater where he wrangles puppets, builds new shows, and manages its community arts programming, all while trying to conquer a mountain of administrative tasks. He and the other Black Cherry artists have been touring marionettes, as well as other puppets, and creating innovative puppetry based educational programs in city neighborhoods and across the Mid-Atlantic region since 1980.

Dirk Joseph

stringtheorytheater.weebly.com/
dirkjart.com
Dirk was born in Trinidad, grew up in NY and has been based in Baltimore for 16 years. For 3 decades he has worked as a visual artist, art teacher, and graphic designer. Dirk started performing puppetry in 2015 and in 2016 founded String Theater, a small Baltimore based puppetry troupe. String Theory Theater creates their original shows employing various puppetry formats including marionettes, hand and rod puppets, crankies, shadow puppets, toy theater, and large scale festival puppets. String Theory String Theory Theater performs and conducts creative workshops in schools, libraries, and community centers, as well as venues such as The Eubie Blake National Jazz and Cultural Center, BMA, Creative Alliance, Black Cherry Puppet Theater, Baltimore Museum of Art, and many more locations around Baltimore. STT has also traveled to perform on stages at the Detroit Institute of Art, UCONN, and DC more.

Mobi Warren

https://mobiwarren.com
Mobi Warren is both a puppeteer and writer. She is author of a YA novel, The Bee Maker, translator from Vietnamese of several works by Thich Nhat Hanh, and co-founder of a Texas writers/artists collaborative, Stone in the Stream, that advocates for environmental awareness and justice. She was the Puppeteer-in-Residence at the San Antonio Museum of Art before leaving to teach mathematics for 21 years in San Antonio's inner city schools. Since retiring, Mobi has re-activated her lifelong love for puppetry to create a troupe of hand and rod puppets that perform skits about biodiversity, especially the beauty and necessity of insects. Mobi serves on the Education Committee of the National Capital Puppetry Guild. As a retired teacher who does not need to earn a living from puppetry, Mobi is interested in supporting the work and livelihood of others, sharing puppetry locally as a community service, and exploring ways to make puppet-building and performances eco-conscious and environmentally friendly.

Paige o'Malley

https://www.paigeomalley.com/
Paige O’Malley (she/her) is a DC based, queer, theatre artist with an appetite for puppetry in all its forms! She is a guild member of the NCPG and a volunteer for the guild’s Kid’s Club. Paige also performs regularly as a company member with We Happy Few DC, working to redefine classical theatre in the District. She has performed live in several national tours with Swazzle Puppet Studio, including playing the title role in the Little Prince. Paige currently uses her signature puppet character Penny Pancakes to create literacy-driven digital content for her work at Bookshop.org. She has also voiced many titles as an audiobook narrator for the Library of Congress. She currently lives happily with her queer family and fur babies in their home in Southeast DC.