The Crew that Helped

Brittany Burton (The voice of Charlemagne, the Dragon) was raised in Florida, where she went to Oviedo High School. She now lives in Portland, Oregon. She knows some German, gibberish, and pirate.She grew up watching the old VHS version of Witch Key, taped at a live performance. She always wanted to be the voice of Charlemagne, and finally her dream came true. No stranger to the stage, Brittany has also performed elegant tribal belly dancing on the stages in Florida. She also sang at Disneyworld with her choir group.
She is also Steve Overton's niece.

Candace Dobson started as a puppeteer with The Olde World Puppet Theatre for about six years, and later built sets and puppets for us. She has worked for Darkest Dreams Entertainment as an actress, set builder and puppeteer for their haunted houses. She has performed for Tendrak Theater as a puppeteer, and Dan DeMoy Productions as an actress while a member of St.Wolfgang’s Bavarian Guild. She has also been a sculptor for ten years. Her first commissioned sculpt was for a yard and garden company called Volcano Garden Art. What she enjoys most is sculpting and needle felting puppets, in particular marionettes. Creating faeries, elves, dragons, and any wonderful creation of that realm brings her great joy.

Dan DeMoy (Voice of Sidney, the Snake) has always had a thread of fabric running through him. For 18 years he ran his family's dry cleaning business learning the ins and outs of fabrics. During this time he ran a non-profit acting group teaching kids history via recreation and then packing them off to Renaissance Fairs where custom costumes and puppets were the order of the day. He took his love of fabrics and creating amazing things with them, opening a custom decor workroom making the finest in custom drapery and fabric accents for the home. Learning the art of performing marionettes he is now one of our principal animators and his skills can be seen throughout Witch Key. You can find him at www.dndydesign.com

Geordie Humphrey is a graphic designer and artist with a life-long love of theater. He became involved with Olde World Puppet Theater when he volunteered to help build parade puppets for an Earth Day event. Along with set and puppet construction Geordie has performed in a few of Olde World Puppet Theater live productions most notably as the Scarecrow in "Wizard of Oz". He performed several of the critters in Witch Key including the bats and the hedgehog. As filming started on Witch Key, Geordie became interested in video and motion graphics. When we had some trouble with the special effects for the film, Geordie offered to give it a try. His demo reel was big hit and he was brought on board to provide special effects for the film.

Jason Ropp has been a puppeteer and designer since the age of 16. His Dragon Theater Puppets was started in 1995 performing for festivals, parties, events and television shows and commercials. Jason Has since worked for many other clients and puppet companies including Tears of Joy Theatre, Olde World Puppet Theatre, Other Hand Productions, Thought Bubble Productions and more. Jason’s company strives to bring educational and fun entertainment to all ages with brilliant puppet shows, enchanting Princess characters, puppet building workshops, and classic party entertainment like face painting and balloon sculptures.He can be reached at www.dragontheater.com. Jason added his vocal talent to the Film short as the Pixie Pirate, Stinger.

Justen Rambo has been working with the company for the last 12 years, helping out wherever his hand is needed. With a background in music, and a flair for dramatic, he has proven himself a stable light and sound man, though he does provide more than that. He has performed with puppets in such shows as “All in a Knight’s Work”, the film production of “Witch Key” and “Wizard of Oz”, which he also helped choreograph and direct. Justen also provided vocal talent for Sherwood’s “Adventures of Robin Hood”, as well as being the announcer for the “Witch Key” movie trailer. Justen also helps out, whenever something needs to be built, is a tech during filming, and adds creative input during the writing process.

Michelle Brouse Peoples and Wyatt Peoples. Mom and Son. Michelle (Voice of Enchantra, the Witch) is an actress, director, teacher and event sculptor. Michelle was the long-time driving force behind the Gresham Little Theatre and was instrumental in bringing Mardi Gras in OZ to the stage. ( For more details, see the South Wing in www.puppetmuseum.com) Her personal philosophy: work hard, play hard, love harder.
Wyatt (Voice of Prince Aaron.) is 11 years old. He loves reading and reading out loud, playing guitar, writing songs, break dancing and helping people. He is a second degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do and would like to learn how to SCUBA dive.

Samantha Anne Maggio appeared on our doorstep one day. She was fascinated with what was going on in the studio. She taught us a lot about the Faerie kingdom, since she's directly connected with it. She worked on Witch Key as a puppeteer, sculptress, set designer and costumer. Loving the outdoors as she does, she helped us design the mountain backdrops as well as the waterways and marshes of Belvuria.If you need stars in a sky, she's perfect for the job. Her latest achievement is hiking from the Mexican border to the Canadian Border.

Starr Sheppard-Decker is a professional singer and actress originally from Orange County, California, but came to her senses and has been residing in Milwaukie, OR for the past 13 years. She has been happily attached to her husband for over nine of those years. She is a mom of three sons and has always been involved with young children in some way. Call it chance or kismet, she found the Olde World Puppet Theatre Studios, made an appointment to meet, and within a week found herself a perfect fit as the voice of the Queen of Hearts. Starr sings lead in a local Portland, OR rock duo, StarrVor. You can find them at facebook.com/StarrVor.

We have had the pleasure over the past 32 years of working with some of the finest artists, actors and animators in the western United States. They all took extreme care and pride in their work, bring great theater to those around us. There are no such words as "it's just for kids", or "they won't be able to tell from a distance". The crew listed below have made major contributions to the arts in live theater, puppet theater, motion pictures, television,and even music videos. Always pushing forth new ideas on design, animation, and the joy of bringing something very heartfelt to the world, these artists deserve to share in the spotlight. We are extremely proud and grateful to each one as they helped us create the new vision of the Olde World Puppet Theatre Studios, with both our new film, Witch Key, and our bookThe Enchanted Ring, setting our long-time dreams in motion.

What can we say about Bobbi Overton, other than she's a mother of four (including Steve), long time service wife to retired Lieutenant Colonel Ken Overton, and the creative spark of the Olde World Puppet Theatre. After watching
The Sound of Music one too many times this courageous mother began performing shows with her children and husband in their Attic Ballroom on base in Aschaffenburg Germany . Even at the age of 73 she crawled up on the sky bridges and puppeteered many of the flying critters and even controlled the little Prince from time to time. Bobbie owns probably the largest collection of Department 56 buildings and characters in all of Oregon, which gave her great expertise in setting up the miniature village of Belvuria for the movie. Bobbie is an actress in her own right, playing the Dutchess of Belvuria for 21 years in the Renaissance acting group, St Wolfgang's Bavarian Court.

We also wish to acknowledge the talents of Bill Holznagel, who has been involved with the Olde World Puppet Theatre since 1995. He assisted in the sculpting and plaster casting of many characters. He has worked for most of the active theatres in Portland, including Tears of Joy Theater and Theatre Calamari as an Artist, playwright, and sculptor. Bill is one of the finest character voice talents in the world of puppetry and live theatre. He has performed in Europe as well as throughout the United States in the acclaimed Waiting for a Train. Bill's playrighting skills, puppet building and live acting were also featured in The Wild Child, an innovative and creative piece blending live performance and puppetry. You can see some of Bill's work in the Portland Cello Project video on YouTube.

Steve Richmond has been involved with theatre since he was a member of the stage crew and coordinated the 100th anniversary Festival of the Arts at Newton High School, in Newton Massachusetts. Later he worked at Catlin Gabel School in Portland Oregon where he was Technical Director and Manager of its Center for the Performing Arts and taught technical theater. He won an OTIS Award for lighting "The Innocents" for Lakewood Theatre in Lake Oswego, Oregon. In later years he relocated to the Chuuk lagoon in the Federated States of Micronesia, where he again involved himself along with some of his students in building, installing and using a lighting system to enhance performances at The College of Micronesia. Here at the Olde World Puppet Theatre Studios, he helped design props and lighting for Witch Key. The collapsing bridge in Sidney's scene was one of his proudest achievements. He is also Marty's Brother.

Steven M. Overton is a classically trained artist and Master Puppeteer, puppet builder, and award-winning costume designer. He wrote the original Tales of Belvuria for performance by the Olde World Puppet Theatre. After 35 years as co-owner of The Olde World Puppet Theatre, he has now retired from live performing, and has opened Olde World Puppet Theatre Studios to focus his attention on writing books and creating movies based on those original stories.
He is the voice of Sterling, the Court Jester.

Marty Richmond, the other co-owner of the Olde World Puppet Theatre Studios, assists in the creation of our innovative puppets, stages, sets, and lighting, as well as our video and computer magic. He was both Head Cinematographer and Video Editor for Witch Key. He is the voice of Ping Pong, the Panda.
To learn more about the 40 year history of the Olde World Puppet Theatre,
visit our companion site www.puppetmuseum.com.

This is a silly little film we made featuring many of the people listed above. See them talk about the bloopers they made, and see some of the fun and hard work we all had in bringing Witch Key to life on video.