Garbanzo The Gentle Caveman

Yanniv Frank is a NYC based artistic creative with a focus on telling uplifting stories through puppetry. Yanniv holds an MFA in Puppet Arts from the University of Connecticut and a BA in Performing and Visual Arts from CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies. Yanniv is on the board of the Puppetry Guild of Greater New York, and he is an alumnus of The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Puppetry Conference and Sesame Workshop’s Puppeteer Training. 

Yanniv has performed as a puppeteer all over the country for audiences as large as 13,000 people. Select performance credits include Off-B’way: The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show, Sesame Street The Musical, The Pocket Park Kids. Nat’l Tour: AJR The Maybe Man Tour, The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show. Off-Off B’way/Regional: Runaway Rue (Skirball Puppet Festival), Exagoge (La MaMa), Little Shop of Horrors (CT Rep), and Food For The Gods (CT Rep). 

Yanniv has built puppets for stage and screen including Boyish Charms, his film that challenges and expands young audiences’ understanding of masculinity. Yanniv created the original stories and characters for Feel Your Best Self which took home the 2023 Kidscreen Award for Best Original Web/App Series. Additional fabrication credits include The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show, Wonder World, The Climate Fables, and The Six Paths. 

As a director, Yanniv believes in creating art that is impactful to both the audience and to the artists involved. Collaborative artistic exploration is crucial; every voice in the room is considered. In addition to directing Boyish Charms, Yanniv has directed over a dozen productions at Riverdale Y in the Bronx starring budding artists ages 6-18. 

In addition to his work in puppetry, Yanniv is a Berklee-trained musician and composer with a catalog of over 50 original songs, including those featured on his three albums Common Human Soul, As I Am, and The Bittersweets.

Mecca Akbar has starred in off-Broadway productions of Pinocchio with New York Children’s Theatre, Tree Haus with the New York Drama Company, as well as the Original cast of Sesame Street: The Musical with Rockefeller Productions. Akbar also performed in Alva Roger’s The Harlem Doll Palace at 2025 Puppetopia Festival at the Here Arts Center. She trained at New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts in Chelsea Manhattan, as well as the British Academy for Dramatic Arts’ Midsummer Shakespeare program at Oxford University. Mecca is a rotating marionettist at the Swedish Marionette Theatre in Central Park. She also teaches seasonal puppetry residencies for Lower Manhattan Arts Academy high school and is a traveling Product Specialist with Toyota. Fall of 2025 Akbar joined Concrete Temple’s PACKRAT at the Festival Mondial Desthéâtres de marionettes in Charleville-Mézzières, France.

Julia Feinberg is an actress, singer and puppeteer based in NYC. Recent credits include the national tour of The Pout-Pout Fish, where she sang and puppeteered as Mr. Pout-Pout all over the country, and Sesame Street The Musical at The Kennedy Center. Julia received her BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. There, she trained at Playwrights Horizons Theater School, Stonestreet Studios and at the NYU Berlin Stanislavsky & Brecht program.

Connor is an actor, puppeteer, and composer living in New York. He has enjoyed a successful performing career Off-Broadway (The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show), regionally (Titanic, She Loves Me, The Little Mermaid), and on TV (Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin). He is a proud member of the BMI Writers Workshop, and wrote the songs for the upcoming animated musical film Circus of Wishes.

Emaley made her Off-Broadway debut in The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show‘s 2023 Off-Broadway Revival before closing out 2023 as an original cast member in Eric Carle Story Show. Other puppetry credits include Sesame Street the Musical and A Christmas Carol.

Nehprii Amenii is a Brooklyn based writer, director, and educator. As a theatre artist, she has a passion for personal narratives, puppetry, and grand-scale spectacle, known for creating experiences that dismantle the wall between players and audiences and inspire new ways of seeing and thinking. She is the founding artistic director of Khunum Productions, a creative consulting and production company. She’s worked with Penumbra Theatre Co, The Flea, Pan Asian Rep Theatre, Bushwick Starr, Iati Theatre, La MaMa, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre, Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, Virginia Stage Co, Lumber Yard Performing Arts, Holland Festival, Minnesota Orchestra, Bread & Puppet Theatre, The Public Theatre, the NY Phil Harmonic at Lincoln Center, and Cirque Du Soleil. As an educator for 20 years, she uses puppetry, multi-media arts and story telling to mentor teachers and to teach English to young immigrants within NYC public schools. She’s taught at numerous colleges, including teaching Directing for Puppetry at the University of CT. Nehprii has received myriad awards and grants for her original work in the U.S. and abroad; served on the advisory committee of the Ballard Institute & Museum of Puppetry, and is a member of The Playwriting Center, Stage Directors and Choreographers Union, and the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. She studied Cultural Anthropology with the International Khepran Institute, holds a BA in Creative Communications from the University of MN, and an MFA in Theatre Production from Sarah Lawrence College. In 2020, she was commissioned by The Movement Theatre Co and a recipient of the Puppet Showplace Black Puppeteer Empowerment Grant.