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Photographs courtesy of Bernie Paniccia

Anna Paniccia’s career in puppeteering began with a wooly mammoth—a 6-foot wooly mammoth constructed for her high school’s theater department. And even though traditional acting was her first love, she came to appreciate the different approach to performing that puppets required. “Some actors have trouble with putting all the life into their hand,” she says. “You’re still acting, but with your hand instead of your body. In a way, part of you gets cut off, but in a way, more goes in there because puppets can say things that people can’t.”

Now the 23-year-old Webster University acting student is designing handheld creations for both school projects and beyond. She got a helping hand—of sorts—from an internship at Puppet Heap, a New York company noted for its work on Nickelodeon’s Bear in the Big Blue House. There, she says, she learned all the “tricks” of the craft. “I wouldn’t be where I am or doing what I do if it hadn’t been for them,” she says.

Paniccia has designed everything from sunflowers in flowerpots to fairy-tale goblins to clothes-wearing humans. But her favorite kind of puppet to develop? “I love doing them all, but the ones you can just go wild with are more fun,” she says. With that in mind, she gave us a look at what went into one of her latest creations for the Internet production Puppet: The Show.


Margot the Kitty Kat:

• “She’s a frazzled, tired kitty cat who only speaks in meows and random words
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  . She can’t find work and doesn’t have many friends because of her speech impediment.”
   
• When commissioned to do a show, Paniccia will often receive a character blurb—like this one for Margot the Kitty Kat—and then begin “doodling,” using the descriptions as guidance. Once the creators and producers have seen the rough sketches, they make their comments and send them back to her for further work. “They say, ‘Oh, I love this aspect, I don’t like this aspect, I want this one and this one, but can you bring in this?’” she explains. “So then I do more sketches, and I come back with ones that are nicer.”
   
• Paniccia’s preferred materials include feathers, corrugated plastic, glass eyes found on a taxidermy website, felt, those green straws they use at Starbucks and salad tongs—you know, all the things you’d think about using when constructing a puppet. “My friends make fun of me all the time because I stick eyeballs on my printer or on the fan or on the toaster in my apartment,” she says. “As soon as you stick eyes on it, it comes to life. Even though puppets are toys and dolls, people can still connect with them, and they’re still able to convey a heart and emotion.”