Lisa Aimee Sturz (born February 2, 1955) is an American puppeteer, arts educator, and founder of Red Herring Puppets, a national touring company established in 1988. Sturz's puppeteering career has spanned more than five decades. She puppeteered in Howard the Duck, RoboCop 2, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III. She was puppet master for The Ring Cycle at the Lyric Opera of Chicago andThe Magic Flute at the Jacobs School of Music and the Atlanta Opera. Her production of My Grandfather's Prayers received a Telly award, and her touring show Aesop's Fables received an UNIMA Citation.
Sturz was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the youngest of two daughters. Her parents were Helaine (née Glickstein), a teacher, and Melvin Sturz, an insurance broker. They were both of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Sturz's maternal grandfather was Izso Glickstein and the subject of Sturz's TV show My Grandfather's Prayers. Sturz's paternal uncle was Herb Sturz.
Sturz attended Bayonne High School where she graduated in 1972. She proceeded to Grinnell College and obtained a BA in Theater and Religious Studies in 1976. After her sophomore year, she had a summer internship in props and scenery at the Guthrie Theater, and later became prop master at Grinnell. For the first semester of her junior year, she was selected for a joint program with the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center for acting, directing, and puppetry. At the Center she apprenticed with puppeteers Rufus Rose and his wife Margo who made and performed many of the puppets on The Howdy Doody Show. Sturz graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1978 with an MA in Experimental Theater. She went to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she received an MFA in Puppetry in 1985.
After graduating from UConn in 1978, Sturz toured as a puppeteer with Pickwick Puppets, founded by Larry Berthelson. In 1980, Sturz was recommended by Bil Baird and staff at the Guthrie Theatre to serve as director of puppetry at the Haya Cultural Center in Amman, Jordan, which was under the patronage of Queen Noor. During her tenure, Sturz co-directed the production of Uncle Za'rour in 1981.
While at UCLA, Sturz worked for Bruce Schwartz as an assistant puppet builder and performer. Schwartz had three UNIMA citations before Sturz started working with him. In 1984, Sturz worked as a Teaching Assistant at UCLA and on The Muppets Take Manhattan as an uncredited additional muppet performer.
Early in her career, Sturz also worked with or was mentored by Jim Gamble, Bil Baird, Burr Tillstrom, and Margo Rose.
After graduating from UCLA in 1985, Sturz worked in Hollywood. Her first project was Captain EO where she puppeteered the characters Hooter and Geex. The film starred Michael Jackson, was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and its executive producer was George Lucas.
Lucas recommended Sturz for Howard the Duck. She manipulated Howard's hands in segments where puppets were used rather than a costumed actor. A list of Sturz's film and television credits is provided below.
Sturz was puppetmaster for two opera productions: The Ring Cycle and The Magic Flute.
The Lyric Opera of Chicago began full performances (all four parts, 15 hours across multiple days) of The Ring Cycle on March 11, 1996 (its 41st season). It was the first time a full Cycle was presented within a year in Chicago since before WWII. All three 1996 Cycles (a total of 12 performances) were sold out months in advance.
The artistic team included conductor Zubin Mehta, director August Everding, set and costume designer John Conklin, lighting designer Duane Schuler, choreographer Debra Brown, and puppetmaster Sturz. The cast for Das Rheingold (the first part of the cycle) included James Morris, Eva Marton/Jane Eaglen, Siegfried Jerusalem, Marjana Lipovà ¡ek, and Matti Salminen. The Lyric's Das Rheingold program credited Sturz as puppet master and for building Alberich's Frog. Sturz also built and staged Fafner's Giant, the woodbirds, and Alberich's dragon.
As told by Fred Putz: "Lisa's appointment as Puppetmaster came as a result of her previous association with Debra Brown (the choreographer from Cirque du Soleil), who had already created the Rhinemaidens swimming through the air on bungee cords and Valkyries leaping through the clouds with the help of trampolines. Debra recommended that Lisa consult with John Conklin (set and costume designer) on the mock-up of the dragon for Siegfried. The Lyric was so pleased with her contributions that she was asked to stage the scene and was designated Puppetmaster."
As Ring puppetmaster in 1996, 2003, and 2005, Sturz choreographed all puppet movements and trained puppeteers to perform them. She also introduced the black light approach for the Siegfried dragon in 2003 and 2005. Her Ring contributions were reviewed in nine articles.
Sturz was puppetmaster for a co-production of The Magic Flute. It premiered at Indiana University Opera Theater's Musical Arts Center in Bloomington in November, 2009. The artistic team included conductor Mark Gibson, stage director Tomer Zvulun, and set and costume designer C. David Higgins. As puppetmaster, Sturz's Red Herring Puppets built and choreographed the puppets, then Sturz directed the puppeteering. A promotional video was posted on November 11, 2009, for the launch. It featured the artistic team, student performers, and the puppets Sturz built.
Arts reviewer George Walker reviewed the debut immediately afterward. (The currently available recording and transcript was published in 2019.) In the review he addressed Sturz's work:
Peter Jacobi also reviewed the production: "And to help satisfy the fairy tale elements of the story, there's a huge and squiggly dragon. There are birds that nibble and peck. There are full-sized, huggable animals. All, of course, are make-believe and brought to life by puppeteers, these trained by an imported master of that craft, puppet creator Lisa Aimee Sturz."
The co-production then moved to the Atlanta Opera to conclude its 2009/2010 season with conductor Arthur Fagen, Zvulun and Higgins. A review of the Atlanta production by Pierre Ruhe references Sturz's dragon: "It helps, too, that they had a good dragon. Puppets are in vogue in theater and opera these days, and this Magic Flute, which premiered in Indiana in November, is wonderfully whimsical without being hollow -- a difficult balance."
Seven years later, Sturz's Magic Flute puppets were refurbished for the Atlanta Opera Studio Tour, which reaches 12,500 students a year. The Flute tour started in October 2017 and repeated in January and May 2018. All performances were fully booked. The Center for Puppetry Arts also hosted the Studio Tour's Magic Flute in January 2018.
The main stage production of The Magic Flute was mounted again by the Atlanta Opera in November 2024 with Fagen, Zvulun, and Higgins. Sturz is credited for the original puppets, and her refurbished bird puppets are featured in a playful promotional video for the production: Puppet Take-Over.
Sturz has supported three symphony productions with puppetry: Petrushka, Pictures at an Exhibition and Peter and the Wolf.
Sturz collaborated with the Asheville Symphony Orchestra to produce Petrushka on May 10, 2008, for their final Masterworks concert of the season. Music director Daniel Meyer decided to present Petrushka, a ballet about puppets, in the 2007âÂÂ2008 season, and executive director Steve Hageman brought in Sturz to collaborate with Meyer. A behind-the-scenes and pre-show video of the co-production was published.
Stravinsky's Petrushka has four central characters: Petrushka the clown, the Ballerina (who is loved by Petrushka), the Moor (to whom the Ballerina is attracted), and the Magician who brings the puppets to life. Sturz's proposal was for conductor Meyer to play the Magician, use ten-foot rod puppets for the other three central puppets, and use projectors for background scenes and to present additional puppets.
The concept was accepted and Sturz's Red Herring Puppets built the puppets and background projections. Sturz was interviewed by Hageman for the season program and described her vision for the production:
The unique challenge with Petrushka has been sharing the stage with a full orchestra. Stravinsky's music is the driving force and the visuals must not compete with the energy and excitement of the score. I observed Daniel Meyer conducting at previous symphonic concerts and couldn't take my eyes off him. I knew his charismatic presence had to be part of the drama. I asked Daniel to double as the magician with the orchestra as the source of the magic and the spirit of the crowd as the Shrovetide Fair.
Sturz's puppetry team included a specialist in Russian ballet (Susan Paul) to help with choreography and a musical coordinator (Gwenn Roberts) to coach the team on moving to the score. The three rod puppets were performed by six puppeteers. Additional puppeteers performed the shadow puppets projected on a screen behind the rod puppets and orchestra. Gwenn Roberts also performed as a real-time shadow puppet imitating conductor Meyer as the Magician.
The 2008 Petrushka production was referenced multiple times in Asheville Symphony's 50th Anniversary publication celebrating past productions.
Pictures at an Exhibition was performed at the Keith-Albee Performing Arts Center by the Huntington Symphony Orchestra on October 25, 2009. Sturz designed, built, choreographed shadow puppets performed on overhead projectors, and trained four puppeteers for the performance. In 2017, Sturz remounted the production for a performance at the Diana Wortham Theater with John Cobb performing the score on piano.
Peter and the Wolf was performed in March, 2012 at the Birmingham Children's Theatre. Forty-four members of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra accompanied the production. Dane Peterson was director and Fawzi Haimor was conductor. Sturz designed and built six four-foot tall rod puppets and eight puppeteers were trained by Sturz to perform them.
Sturz co-produced and created a movie with JLTV: My Grandfather's Prayers. It was recorded at JLTV studios in Los Angeles and aired internationally. The film is a multi-media theatrical performance based on the life of Izso Glickstein, a fourth-generation cantor, child prodigy, and operatic tenor. Background research included visiting officials at the Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest. One recalled Glickstein and pointed Sturz to the National Archives of Hungary. Sturz also visited Congregation Mishkan Tefila and reviewed their Glickstein archives.
Sturz used shadow puppets, scrolling backgrounds, marionettes, digital compositing, and rhyme to explore her own ancestry, artistry, spirituality, and social responsibility. Two solo klezmer fiddle tracks by Michael Levy from Echoes of the Shtetl were used.
Before making the film, Sturz created a touring puppet show. Theater professional and documentary filmmaker Rebecca Williams was consulting director. The tour included Asheville, Cleveland, Iowa, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Boston, New York, and Tucson. At the Midwest Regional Puppeteers of America Festival in Iowa, the show was reviewed in the local newspaper: Puppeteer Lisa Sturz tells the story of her grandfather's life ... This was not a story to entertain children, and seeing the show was an experience much like seeing an Oscar-winning drama.
Before it was performed in Asheville, a description of the production was published in a local magazine. Then an interview with Sturz was published by Blue Ridge Public Radio about her background and the touring show. Another segment of the tour was in Tucson, and a five-and-a-half minute segment about the film was aired on Tucson's ABC affiliate KGUN-TV. Sturz described how Glickstein's music inspired her to make the film.
The film premiered on JLTV, January 25, 2020. Just before it aired, a detailed interview with Sturz was published on Arizona Jewish Post. It described Glickstein's journey as a cantor, first in Europe, then in Boston. It also reviews Sturz's career. Later, the film was described by Sturz in an article.
The film won a Telly Award and a DeRose-Hinkhouse Award, both in 2021.
Four videos about Sturz's work have been published:
A two-minute version of the AZPM video on Sturz was published for State of the ArtZ 101 (Sturz segment: 8:16-10:10). A 53-minute radio interview with Sturz was published on the talk show Tucson Business Radio X. She was also interviewed for five minutes on TV about her movie My Grandfather's Prayers on Tucson's ABC affiliate. Print articles about Sturz are summarized toward the end of this page (see: #Articles About Sturz).
Sturz founded Red Herring Puppets in 1988. It provides puppet performances, puppet builds, and education. The company has toured over 20 puppet shows created by Sturz. About half of them were based on legends, fables, history, and science. The others are original Sturz creations. Three were mounted for national fall-to-spring tours. Recently, Sturz produced bilingual shows in Spanish and English. Several Red Herring Puppets shows still toured at schools, libraries, and theaters in 2025.
Sturz's process for creating a show was: research; storyboarding; script writing (often in rhyme); puppet design and building; portable stage and scenery design and building (to fit in a mini-van); sourcing music and voice talent; sound recording and mixing; sourcing puppeteer talent; training and rehearsing puppeteers; marketing (including article writing, participating in newspaper and TV interviews, etc.); securing grants, venues, and performance commitments; show logistics; and billing and accounting.
Sturz served as adjunct professor at Warren Wilson College in 2015 and taught a course on puppet slams, ending with a performance at White Horse Black Mountain. Sturz is also an educator through classroom artist-in-residence programs (or residencies). Starting in 2023, Red Herring Puppets' home venue has been the Scoundrel and Scamp Theater, where Sturz is an artistic associate along with Wolfe Bowart.
Sturz started making molds at The Hand Prop Room in 1985 and then worked at Walt Disney Imagineering and Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Some of her large-scale puppet builds were for Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History and the Shedd Aquarium.
Sturz was hired to create or perform puppets for a variety of commercials. She was a principal puppeteer for the 1987 Chevrolet Corsica ad with aliens in a spacecraft called The Collector. It was shot in Douglas Trumbull's Showscan process which featured a unique visual style: 70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second, 2.5 times the standard movie speed. The ad celebrated Chevrolet's 75th Anniversary.
The 1996 ad for Diet Snapple by creative director Richard Kirshenbaum, The Ultimate Frontier, won a Paley award for Best Spots of April, 1996. Sturz designed, fabricated, and operated the sock puppets for this commercial.
Sturz wrote a book chapter: Puppetry and Virtual Theater (Chapter 7, with contributions from Tim Lawrence, Wendy Morton, Brad Shur, and Kirk Thatcher) in the book The Egyptian Oracle Project: Ancient Ceremony Augmented Reality by Robyn Gillam and Jeffrey Jacobson in 2015.
Sturz has contributed 13 articles to The Puppetry Journal
Sturz has contributed three articles to Puppetry International
Sturz published a second article with Mark Bryan Wilson in 1991: On Camera: SAG Puppeteers, The Modern Practice of an Ancient Art. She also published an article about My Grandfather's Prayers in WNC Woman.