Jnwilliams

About

Joyce Noel Williams has been saturating herself in the world of puppetry since 2015, when she was invited to participate in the Jim Henson Diversity Workshop in Los Angeles. This prompted her to pack up 16 years of theater work in Chicago and get her MFA in Puppetry from the University of Connecticut. She received her degree in 2019 and currently works full time as a Puppeteer performing and making puppets for Wishing Chair Productions / Puppet Truck of the Nashville Public Library. 

She has been a puppet designer, fabricator, and puppeteer in theatre, film, and television. Her MFA Project was six episodes of a live television show for the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Noel worked with the hospital to develop content, and  created a washable rod and mouth puppet design. She acted as a designer, fabricator, writer, director, choreographer, puppeteer, and producer on the project. Her design work includes puppets for the 2022 production of "James and the Giant Peach" at VCU, multiple productions with Artstillery Theatre Company in Texas (2018-21), and  the "Cardiff Giant"  puppet for the well received IndieWorks NYC musical production of "The Giant Hoax" in 2019.  She can be seen right hand puppeteering in the feature length film "A Fairy Tale After All" directed by Erik Peter Carlson, which can be found on AppleTV+. She was also on the Monkey Boys fabrication team  for "Little Shop of Horrors" Off-Broadway revival in 2019.

Noel also worked at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry teaching workshops, giving tours, and assisting with exhibit installations. She also continues to explore the inherent dialogue in puppetry through outreach work. She was an Inner Campus Dialogue Fellow and received the Graduate Student Fellowship In Engaged Scholarship for her work with high school students exploring original puppet work on the topic of bullying.

Additional training during her puppetry studies include : 2018 Beyond the Sock On Camera Puppetry Workshop, 2017 Sesame Workshop in On Camera Puppetry, 2020 and 2017  National Puppetry Conferences and 2017 Pre-Conference, Patient Media Intern for the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and Fabrication Apprentice for Monkey Boys Productions.