Frankie Cordero (Rudy)
Frankie Cordero’s mother and magician/clown father supported his early love of theater, VHS filmmaking, and a lifelong dream to work with the Muppets™ one day.
Frankie Cordero is an Emmy-Nominated Puppeteer and Puppet Builder.
While growing up in Chicago, his mother and magician/clown father supported his early love of theater, VHS filmmaking, and his lifelong dream to work with Sesame Street one day.
He began working for Sesame Workshop in 2000 as a performer at live events and photo shoots, while studying at The University of Connecticut; he later joined the Sesame Street cast in Season 47. In addition to a handful of monsters, chickens, and penguins, Cordero is thrilled to play Rudy, Abby Cadabby’s 3-year-old stepbrother. He has trained puppeteers for international co-productions of Sesame Street, and is currently one of the mentees in Sesame Workshop’s inaugural Director’s program.
Cordero has worked nationally and internationally as a director/puppeteer/puppet builder/puppet wrangler, helping bring countless characters to life in short films, music videos, national commercials, and TV shows such as The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Tick, CSI: Las Vegas, It’s a Big, Big World, DillonGale (Ron), Fraggle Rock: Rock On! (Wembley), Donkey Hodie (Purple Panda, Turtle Lou, Gregory, Penguin Referee, others), Julie’s Greenroom with Julie Andrews (Spike), Oobi (Papu), Frankie and Frank (Frankie), and various characters on Jack’s Big Music Show and Nature Cat. He also works as a director/storyboard artist for Chicago-based Spiffy Pictures and Fred Rogers Productions, having storyboarded and directed over 30 episodes (and counting!) of Donkey Hodie for PBS Kids.
Live performance credits include performances at The White House, La MaMa ETC, Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall, and The Metropolitan Opera, in which he was one of three principal puppeteers in Madama Butterfly, portraying the title character’s three-year-old son, Sorrow. Cordero has also toured nationally and internationally with such companies as Blair Thomas & Co, Hystopolis Productions, Phantom Limb Company, Walking With Dinosaurs, and Dramaton Theater, where he was a principal performer and co-Artistic Director. Cordero’s work has been awarded the 2015 Armstrong Award in Comedy, the 2004 Kevin Clash Scholarship for Puppeteers of Color for the National Puppetry Conference at The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and the 2002/2004 Jim Henson Memorial Prize in Puppetry, awarded while Cordero was a student in The University of Connecticut’s Puppet Arts Program.
During the off-season, Cordero teaches television-style puppetry in the Chicagoland area where he lives with his wife, two daughters and their cat, Stanley. Frankie is also a proud survivor of Chordoma, a rare bone cancer. He currently sits on the board for The Chordoma Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping patients and their families in finding better treatments and one day, a cure.
