![]() ![]() She was also working a full-time job and happened to be pregnant with her second child. Muppet-style puppetry meant keeping the body out of the camera frame and using monitors to see how the puppets looked on screen. She was used to doing stage ventriloquism, which involved interacting with puppets without moving the lips. It was definitely an adjustment, Piphus Peace said. In 2020, Piphus Peace said she was contacted by “Sesame Street” performers Matt Vogel and Martin Robinson, who asked if she’d be willing to learn the signature muppet-style puppetry of the show. “I just couldn’t give up the feeling of making audiences smile,” she said. She would wake up early to write material, practice in the evenings after work and find opportunities to perform on the weekends. But all the while, she kept pursuing her interests in ventriloquism and puppetry. Her talents were also on display during her high school valedictorian speech, earning her the nickname “ Valedictorian Ventriloquist.” As a college student at Vanderbilt University, she became known as the “ Vanderbilt Ventriloquist,” appearing on “ The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” in 2012 and on “America’s Got Talent” in 2013.Īfter getting her undergraduate degree in 2014 and a master’s of science in finance in 2015, Piphus Peace embarked on a career in real estate finance. “My soul was just lifted by being able to make kids anywhere from kindergarten to sixth grade smile and laugh.”ĭuring her teenage years, Piphus Peace performed across her hometown of Cincinnati and around the country. “I realized how you can captivate the attention of a child with a puppet,” she said. Piphus Peace's character Gabrielle (second from left) is a 6-year-old muppet who loves to sing and dance. Soon, she was performing for her classmates, and then the entire elementary school. Her parents were incredibly supportive, she said, and helped her find a puppet and videotapes of ventriloquists for her to learn from. ![]() “That just had so much magic to me, and I wanted to do the same.” “Onstage, you got to see the interaction between a human and an inanimate object that was coming to life,” Piphus Peace said. There, Piphus Peace was inspired by the female performers she saw – so much so that when she came home, she told her parents she wanted to be a ventriloquist. ![]() When she was 10, a woman at her church wanted to start a puppetry team to perform for the children in the congregation, and assembled a group to attend a puppetry conference. Piphus Peace learned about puppeteering early on. These days, she’s the voice of 6-year-old Gabrielle on “Sesame Street,” and the first Black woman puppeteer in the show’s more than 50-year history. So you’re speaking their imaginative and creative language when you’re allowing a puppet to come to life.”Įver since Piphus Peace discovered that puppetry could be an art form, it’s been a passion – one that she’s pursued throughout her life. “Puppets allow us to enter the imagination of a child,” Piphus Peace told CNN. The self-trained ventriloquist and puppeteer grew up watching the sock puppets on “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along,” the hand puppets of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” and the muppets of “Sesame Street.” As a child, the characters seemed so alive, and it was only later that she learned what it took to create that sense of reality. Megan Piphus Peace has always found magic in puppets. ![]()
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