Board of Directors

2025 board of directors

Sarah Olmsted Thomas - President

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.

Sarah Bourne - Vice President

theatre.wvu.edu/faculty-staff/sarah-bourne
Sarah Bourne first joined the National Capital Puppetry Guild in 1998. She’s happy to be back after a long hiatus, rejoining in 2020. She’s currently the Costume and Puppet Shop Manager at West Virginia University, home of one of the two USA-based BFA in Puppetry Programs. She’s previously worked for Austin Peay State University, Animax Designs, VEE Corporation, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, and has been the technical director for Puppeteers of America National Festivals in 2001, 2005, and 2007. She has performed her own puppetry pieces in Minneapolis, Baltimore, Salt Lake City, Shepherdstown, and Boston as well as performing in shows with the Underground Railway Theatre, the University of Utah Lyric Ensemble, and the Contemporary American Theatre Festival. She was a participant at the National Puppetry Conference in 2021 and 2022. Sarah earned a B.F.A. and an M.A. in Puppetry Arts from the University of Connecticut and an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Theatre and Performance Art from Towson University. She’s very excited to serve on the NCPG Board of Directors!

Photo by Richard Termine.

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.

Michael Lamason - Treasurer

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.

Peter Court - Member at Large

creativemadness123.wixsite.com/website
Peter has worked in education, the creative arts and theatre for almost thirty five years, and in South Africa for over twenty five years. Much of his current work focuses on strengthening school systems through the creative arts and life orientation programmes. He is also a certified life coach, counsellor and a skilled facilitator. He continues to make theatrical work and to perform occasionally.

Peter is the Director of Creative Madness (Pty) Ltd. Creative Madness is an award-winning company with international experience in theatre and education and specialises in creating tailor-made productions, processes or curricula for the corporate, not-for-profit and education market. Creative Madness works with the Mr Price Foundation as the Creative Arts implementation partner in its National Schools Development Programme - EduRise.

Genna Beth Davidson - Member at Large

Genna Beth Davidson is a professional puppeteer, designer, fabricator, and all-around theatre artist. She graduated from the University of Connecticut’s Puppet Arts program with her M.F.A. in 2022. Prior to graduate school, she lived in Washington, DC where she co-founded Wit’s End Puppets and also designed puppets for the likes of Pointless Theatre and Brave Spirits Theatre. She loves designing and building large theatrical puppets, writing and creating her own puppetry work, and filing away puppet theatre history into an ever-growing memory bank of puppet trivia. Most recently she has been performing as a puppeteer in Barefoot Puppet’s New Squid on the Block. She’s been a member of NCPG for three years and counting. She serves as a member of the Eco-puppetry Committee and the Fettig Project. She is also a member of Puppeteers of America and UNIMA-USA.

Jill Kyle-Keith - Member at Large

Jill Kyle-Keith is the Owner and Queen of Beale Street Puppets in Baltimore, Md. A professional full-time puppeteer since 1988, she holds a BA in Performance Theatre from the University of Maryland, and a Lifetime Achievement Award in Making a Living Out Of Thin Air (self awarded). Jill and her husband Bill Walker have been married for 33 years resulting in another Award for Marriage Endurance, also self awarded. She is the proud parent of Scotty Walker, 26, and Toby Walker, 23, both of whom, over the years, have been forced, sometimes at Nerf gunpoint, into performing in various puppet shows as well as dressing up as the Crab from Moana and Toby the Dog from Punch and Judy. During the performance-free days of Covid, Jill has been making artisan dollhouse miniatures, selling online, and most recently, has traveled twice to the juried London Dolls House Festival in the UK. Scotty and Toby were, of course, forced to come and help set up and sell and then go see culture. Jill is currently involved in an ill advised, pie-in-the-sky endeavor to turn her tumbledown Beale Street Puppets studio in Baltimore into The Museum of Tiny Things, an offbeat, Balty-style small museum, devoted to dollhouses, vintage toys, squished pennies, 1950s rhinestone jewelry, miniature bits and bobs, and, of course, puppets. She also recently got a tattoo of a mermaid, because why not? Who's gonna stop her?

Melissa Perenson - Member at Large

Melissa has worked as a writer and editor for over two decades. She was an editor at Forbes Vetted, PCWorld, and PCMag, and a freelance writer for countless publications — among them CNET, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, The Hollywood Reporter, SCIFI Magazine and now Static Media. She loves writing product reviews since she can dig into how gear works and why it's relevant. Her favorite categories include mobile and creator tools, which together cover a range of products that help creatives produce their work. She also writes news, trends, features, and opinion pieces. As a frequent traveler, she has a particular penchant for all manner of mobile gear and digital photography, with expertise across a wide range of consumer tech and home entertainment categories. When not diving into the latest gear, she also works as a sports photographer, freelance book editor and storyteller.

Alex Vernon - Member at Large

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 since 2018. You may recognize him as one of the regular hosts of the Guild's meetings, 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.