Leslie Carrara-Rudolph

Career

Leslie Carrara-Rudolph is known for performing the fairy Abby Cadabby on the PBS Kids show Sesame Street, for which she was nominated for a 2009 Emmy Award for best performer in a children's series. She is also known for her puppeteer role as Ginger on Playhouse Disney's Johnny and the Sprites. She performed the muppet Jesse for Sesame Street's military outreach project Touch, Listen, and Connect, which starred Katie Couric. Carrara-Rudolph plays various characters on Sesame Street throughout the season. She got her start on ABC's Muppets Tonight as Spamela Hamderson. Other puppeteering credits include Edi the Zebra on the Learning Channel's Animal Jam and the evil blonde vampire puppet in the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Carrara-Rudolph is one of the founding members of the Henson improv group Puppet Up!, which was later renamed Stuffed and Unstrung. She was part of the improv cast for its debut at the Aspen Comedy Festival. She toured with them to the Australian comedy festival and was a cast member for the off-Broadway show at the Union Square Theater. She also played the main role of Blue, the female blue puppy in Nick Jr.'s Blue's Room.

Her original character Lolly Lardpop has a musical Comedy CD out called Sunkinsass. Carrara-Rudolph portrayed the human kiddie-show star Miss Poppy in the satirical play Pigeon-Holed, written by Sesame writer Annie Evans and Sesame puppeteer regulars. She does regular voice-over work, including characters in Zatch Bell, Ratchet & Clank, and The Simpsons. She has a BA degree from San Francisco State University in her major "Child Development Through the Arts." When she is not performing, she illustrates children's books and paints.

Carrara-Rudolph performs an original, candy-obsessed character, Lolly, in several clubs and events in New York and Los Angeles, and works in children's outreach programs. Carrara-Rudolph released a Lolly children's CD called Spunkinsass.

Carrara-Rudolph has written and produced several one-woman shows. Her latest musical, Entertaining a Thought, which was developed at the 2009 Ojai Play Write Conference, recently received a Jim Henson Foundation Grant and a 2009–2010 UNIMA Citation of Excellence in the Art of Puppetry. She just finished a run of her newest interactive show, Wake Up Your Weird, at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta. The show she created for the Disney company, The Wahoo Wagon, ran for six months at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood and featured all of her original characters.

Some of Carrara-Rudolph's voice-over credits include the voice of Peg Puppy for Nickelodeon's cartoon series T.U.F.F. Puppy, and background voices for The Simpsons and for The Electric Company, for which she voices Wolfman, Bat, and Mummy. She joined the cast of the podcast series The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd in the season three premiere and has guest starred several times since.

She plays the character Bubbles in Splash and Bubbles.

She was an additional puppeteer in Julie's Greenroom.