Noreen Young

Noreen Young

Country 
GenderFemale
Birthday
BiographyNoreen Isabel Young CM (born May 10, 1939) is a Canadian producer, puppeteer and puppet builder. She grew up in Old Ottawa South, Ontario, with her two younger brothers, John and Stephen Brathwaite, then studied drawing and painting at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto.

Reading whatever she could, she learned how to build her own puppets and she became known for puppets cast with liquid latex so she could sculpt them, and the faces could move and wiggle and the mouths could open and close.

Young began her lifelong career in television puppetry at CJOH/CTV and CBOT/CBC in Ottawa, notably with Hi Diddle Day (1967–1976) (a show about a female mayor named Gertrude Diddle, in a small town called Crabgrass) and Pencil Box (1977 - 1979). The former received an Ohio State Award and the latter received ACTRA's Best Children's Programme in 1978. She was known for building puppets for shows including Today's Special and Téléfrançais. She became an independent television producer with Noreen Young Productions Inc., which, with CBC and Telefilm Canada, produced Under the Umbrella Tree, a popular CBC Television children's series that ran from 1987 to 1993 on the CBC nationally and from 1990 to 1997 on the Disney Channel. It was also dubbed in French for Canal Famille and currently streams on the Canada Media Fund's Encore+ on YouTube in both languages. For that show, she was Executive Producer and performed the character "Gloria the Gopher".

Young was also the puppeteer for "Dodie", a character on Sesame Park, the Canadian version of Sesame Street. Her puppet characters appeared on many TVOntario productions including Readalong and Téléfrançais! and she was featured in the second Care Bears television special, 1984's The Care Bears Battle the Freeze Machine.

Young is known for her caricature puppets of public figures such as former Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge and hockey commentator Don Cherry, plus many prominent personalities from her hometown of Almonte, Ontario.

In 2018, Young's puppets were featured in an exhibit "Noreen Young, a Puppet Retrospective", at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum, in Almonte. The 150 puppets from her collection that were exhibited spanned her career from 1967 to 2018. They included Basil the Beagle from Hi Diddle Day (1967–1976) and 10 puppets which she created for an adult opera, "Sleeping Rough", written by composer Roddy Ellias and performed for the Ottawa music festival, "Music and Beyond" (2018). Many of her puppets now reside in the National Museum of History and at Library and Archives Canada.

Biography from the Wikipedia article Noreen Young. Licensed under CC-BY-SA. Full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Known For

Part of Crew

Recently Updated Shows

Recently updated shows that might be of your interest.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Running

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.

Going Dutch
Running

Going Dutch

In Going Dutch a decorated, hard-ass colonel is tasked with running the least important U.S. Army base in the world, located in the tulip-hugging, wine-chugging Netherlands.

GenreComedy
Kids Baking Championship
Running

Kids Baking Championship

Hosts and judges Duff Goldman and Valerie Bertinelli lead eight talented kid bakers through tasty challenges designed to find the most impressive and creative young baker on Kids Baking Championship. In each challenge, the kid contestants (ranging in age from 10 to 13) will be tested on their baking skills and originality, as they whip up delectable desserts including creative cakes, mouthwatering cookies and pastries making it seem as easy as pie. At stake, a sweet prize package that includes a complete set of Food Network bakeware products, a profile in Food Network Magazine, an original cake featured at Charm City Cakes and a $10,000 grand prize. Only one will take the cake to become the Kids Baking Champion!

Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Running

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

12-year-old modern demigod Percy Jackson has just come to terms with his newfound supernatural powers when the sky god Zeus accuses him of stealing his master lightning bolt. Now Percy must trek across America to find it and restore order to Olympus.

Night Court
Running

Night Court

Night Court centers on the unapologetic optimist judge Abby Stone, daughter of the late Harry Stone, who follows in her father's footsteps as she presides over the night shift of a Manhattan arraignment court and tries to bring order to its crew of oddballs and cynics, most notably former night court prosecutor Dan Fielding.