The puppetry
story.

Allan came to puppetry sideways. Born in Brooklyn and moving to Miami Beach at the start of ninth grade, he started acting at Miami Beach Senior High under famed drama teacher Jay Jensen. He then spent four years at Washington University in St. Louis, earning a BA in Physics and Drama.

St. Louis is where the puppetry began. Still an undergraduate, he auditioned for The Letter People at public television station KETC — and got it. It was his first professional puppet job, and he performed Mr. C and Mr. W (among other characters) in all sixty fifteen-minute episodes. He cut classes every Friday to shoot each episode.

From there came an MFA in Acting from the California Institute of the Arts, where he met his wife Diane.

Much of the 1980s was spent splitting his time between acting — television, commercials, film — and puppetry projects: for Dave Pavelonis and his Peppercorn Players, direct-to-video shows like The Kid-a-Littles, network specials like A Very Retail Christmas (1990) and a trip to Tokyo for a Japanese McDonald's commercial.

Then came an audition that outlasted everything else on the list. He was sent to read for Return of the Living Dead (1985) and was cast as the Tarman — a role he'd return to for the 1988 sequel. The film became a cult classic, and Tarman became an icon of the genre — the first zombie in film history to ask specifically for "Brains!"

Two years after CalArts, while Allan was working at Leo's Stereo in Los Angeles, his high-school buddy Jerry Gelb told him about an audition notice for a "puppet school" sponsored by Sid and Marty Krofft. The Kroffts built their reputation on some of the most imaginative and visually distinctive character work in television history — from H.R. Pufnstuf to a run of Saturday-morning fantasy series that introduced a generation to the craft of puppetry.

Allan spent the summer of 1980 in a series of workshops there under the direction of Tony Urbano, where he met a group of young puppeteers who became lifelong friends — B Lanoil, Kevin Carlson, Tim Blaney, and others. He soon joined the cast of D.C. Follies, the satirical late-night puppet show set in a Washington bar — the show that earned him two Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program. He was also a series regular on Pryor's Place, the Krofft-produced Saturday-morning series starring Richard Pryor.

In 1990, as part of the then-pending purchase of the Muppets by the Walt Disney Company, Jim Henson came to Los Angeles to direct Muppet*Vision 3D, an attraction for Disney's theme parks. Once again a friend (this time Kevin Carlson) got Allan into the audition — and that was the beginning of his career with the Jim Henson Company. He worked with Jim Henson through four months of post-production, until Henson's death.

In 1991 Allan joined the cast of Dinosaurs as the animatronic puppeteer for Fran Sinclair, among many other characters. The show stayed in production for 65 episodes, through the end of 1993, and introduced him to sophisticated animatronics — experience that carried into a long run of film work.

His work with the Muppets themselves has included Muppet Classic Theatre, Muppets from Space, Muppets Tonight, It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, and The Muppet Show (2026), as well as performing with the full ensemble at The Muppets Take the Hollywood Bowl (2017) and The Muppets Take the O2 in London (2018).

Beyond the Muppets, Allan's work with the Jim Henson Creature Shop includes Dr. Dolittle, Jack Frost, Cats & Dogs, The Country Bears, Babe, and The Jungle Book (2016), where he was one of three on-set puppeteers — plus a core puppeteer role on The Happytime Murders, and commercial work like Bad Andy, the Creature Shop-built mascot from a series of Pizza Hut ads.

Allan has become one of the world's most experienced puppeteers on the Henson Digital Puppetry Studio, performing many characters on animated shows like Splash and Bubbles as well as animatronic shows like Earth to Ned (co-performing Ned with Paul Rugg).

In the summer of 2005 Allan became a founding member of Puppet Up!—Uncensored, Brian Henson's live puppet improv show. It began as a series of experimental puppetry/improv sessions under the direction of Patrick Bristow. By early 2006, the company gave its first performance at the HBO Comedy Festival in Aspen. That summer saw its debut at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Under its own name and as Stuffed and Unstrung, the show has played off-Broadway; at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival; in Sydney and Brisbane, Australia; on tour across the United States; and on the historic Chaplin Stage on the former Jim Henson Company lot. Allan continues to perform in the show, most recently at the Montalban Theatre in Hollywood (tickets at puppetup.com). Throughout this process, Allan has also served as a puppetry technique instructor for the company.

Not every credit fits neatly into one company's story…

Timmy the Tooth was a direct-to-video series created by Kevin Carlson and James Murray, still two of Allan's closest friends. The show is getting a bit of a revival now as the Gen-Xers and Millennials who watched it get nostalgic.

After Dinosaurs, two of that show's producers asked for Allan on their next series: Unhappily Ever After, a sitcom on the then-brand-new WB Network. From 1995 to 1999 he performed Mr. Floppy, the lead character's wise-cracking — and imaginary — talking rabbit, voiced live in front of the studio audience by Bobcat Goldthwait.

Allan worked on both Men in Black (1997) and Men in Black II (2002) as part of the creature puppeteer crew under Rick Baker and Tony Urbano, alongside many of his friends.

More recently he performed Horus, General Skelly, and other characters on The Barbarian and the Troll, the 2021 Nickelodeon series.