A Career Behind the Spotlight

Make impossible leaps. Separate its arms from its body. These are a couple of things Cricket Bradford ’23 lists that a puppet can do that a human, well, can’t.

Bradford is the master electrician for the Center for Puppetry Arts in their hometown of Atlanta. While they worked in theatrical lighting in high school and at Bryn Mawr, working in a theater devoted to puppetry—the largest organization dedicated to the art form of puppetry in the country, in fact, where Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog themselves cut the ceremonial opening ribbon in 1978—was new for Bradford.

“Other theaters don’t have a puppet shop, I’ll tell you that,” they say. “I’ve really developed a fondness for them, the stories they are able to tell, and the creativity you can take with them. It’s sort of like animation in real life.”

An ordinary day at work can involve meeting with the lighting designers, running cables, and focusing lights. There’s a lot of math and logical thinking involved, such as calculations to avoid overloading circuits. But Bradford also gets to visit the puppet shop, where the puppets are made and maintained for the Center’s dozen-plus annual productions, and even occasionally pitch in to help as a puppeteer when the shop is testing new concepts. The Center works with artists from all over the world, and Bradford likes bringing friends to shows to challenge their preconceived notions of puppets.

Bradford’s career goal was to be master electrician for a theater. So where do you go when get your dream job so early in your career? “I guess you just keep going to it,” they say. “I love being able to go into the theater and hang the lights up and turn the lights on and have it look really beautiful.”