The Little Players were a repertory puppet troupe that performed in New York City from 1952 to the early 1980s, producing ballets, operas, and plays. The company consisted of five puppet characters; a single puppeteer, Francis J. Peschka; and W. Gordon Murdock, who provided the costuming, lighting, and musical accompaniment. In 1966, The New Yorker critic Edmund Wilson declared Peschka "the greatest master of glove-puppetry whose work I have ever seen."