Chase Woolner



Chase Woolner (b. 1990) is a puppet builder and performer from Chicago, Illinois. Chase's interest in puppetry began at a young age and started performing publicly for his elementary school classes. While his parents travelled back and forth between Chicago and San Francisco for work, Chase joined the San Francisco Bay Area Puppet Guild becoming one of the youngest members at that time. In high school Chase became involved with theater and started a puppetry club in which he led members through puppet design, construction and performance.

Having trained with many of the top puppeteers and builders in the USA, Chase decided to further his education and was accepted as a bachelor of fine arts puppetry student at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California in 2008. Since then Chase has been a participant several times at the Eugene O'Neill National Puppetry Conference and has worked professionally as a junior hire with Puppet Heap, an additional puppeteer on 2011 film "The Muppets," an intern with the Jim Henson Creature Shop and a concept designer with Walt Disney Imagineering.

Chase recently finished work on his own, original story puppet short, entitled "s'Muther," screened at film and puppetry festivals, Summer 2011.