Rick Lyon

Rick Lyon is a puppeteer and actor originally from Rochester, New York, who has worked for the Jim Henson Company as one of the operators of Big Bird. He appeared on Broadway originating the roles of several characters in Avenue Q, a musical for which he designed and created the puppets. In the fall of 2005 he reprised his roles as Nicky and Trekkie Monster in the production of the show in Las Vegas for nine months before returning to the Broadway cast. He also worked with Nickelodeon on the Stick Stickly project. He was a lead puppeteer for the first season of Comedy Central's television program Crank Yankers. He studied theater at Penn State University and puppetry at the Institute of Professional Puppetry Arts in Connecticut and the Institut Internationale de la Marionnette in France. He is married to actress Tonya Dixon, who played opposite him as Gary Coleman in the Las Vegas cast. They have one child. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.