Adam KreutingerRonnie Le Drew (1947–2026) was a British puppeteer whose s... (1988–2025) was a puppet builder and educator who taught puppet construction to a global audience through his YouTube channel Puppet Nerd.
He was a schoolteacher
Kreutinger worked full time as an elementary school art teacher in the Buffalo, New York area, holding a Master’s in Art Education from Buffalo State College, where he received the Dean’s award for excellence in the field. Everything else — the tutorials, the podcast, the builds — happened around a teaching job.
Puppet Nerd
grew past 176,000 subscribers on the strength of weekly puppet-building tutorials aimed squarely at beginners. He was not demonstrating finished mastery; he was showing people how to start, with the tools they already had, which is a different and much rarer skill.
Puppet Tears
He hosted and produced the podcast Puppetry Shop Talk, interviewing working professionals including Dave GoelzDave Goelz is the Muppet performer behind Gonzo, Dr., Fran Brill, Matt Vogel, Bill Barretta, Louise Gold, Leslie Carrara-Rudolph and Ryan Dillon. Across more than eighty episodes it became one of the few substantial oral records of how this craft is actually practised.
He built professionally too
, designing and constructing puppets for television, film and stage internationally, including the New Zealand children’s series Kune’s Kitchen. He performed locally with the Buffalo troupe The Nimalz, and ran one of the largest puppet building communities on Facebook.
Why he belongs in a glossary
Most people who can build at a professional level do not teach, and most people who teach are not building at that level. Kreutinger did both, publicly and generously, and a very large number of working builders today learned their first techniques from him.
The Buffalo 48 Hour Film Project continues to present the Kreutinger Creativity Award in his name.