Prairie Dawn Puppet

Prairie Dawn is a hand-rod puppet originally performed by Fran Brill and currently performed by Stephanie D’Abruzzo. In a hand-rod puppet, like Prairie Dawn, the performer’s dominant hand goes into the puppet’s head and operates the mouth and sometimes other facial features. The less dominant hand controls the arm rods, which are thin rods connected to the puppet’s hands. Prairie Dawn debuted on Sesame Street in 1971. Jim Henson used his little girl character from the 1960s as his inspiration for the character of Prairie Dawn. Henson’s little girl character appeared on several different shows throughout the 1960s where she often faced monsters and used her wits to outsmart them. Prairie Dawn is designed to be seven years old, which is older than many of the other characters on Sesame Street. She is an aspiring journalist and is considered to be level-headed and detail-oriented.

This specific Prairie Dawn puppet was originally built for The Art of the Muppets traveling exhibit in 1979. It was displayed as an Anything Muppet with red hair for the exhibit. An Anything Muppet is a blank Muppet head to which can be added any sort of facial features, clothes, or body type to create any kind of character. This specific puppet was never performed on Sesame Street, but it was built using the same puppet patterns and building process as the puppets performed on Sesame Street.