Can a Canadian puppeteer be Canadian Idol?

Seventeen year-old musical dynamo Steffi D. is a puppeteer and wants to be the next Canadian Idol.

I don’t follow Canadian Idol (the Canadian version of the worldwide Pop Idol franchise) very closely (or at all really), but when I saw most of an episode last week I can’t believe that I didn’t realize that 17 year-old Steffi D is Steffi Didomenicantonio, one third of Puppets and People Productions. Steffi and fellow teenage puppeteer Ben Durocher made a big impression at last year’s Puppets Up! festival in Almonte (scroll down to the bottom of the page for details). The Puppets and People Productions site lists Steffi as “on hiatus” (obviously, since she’s busy vying to become Canadian Idol), but you can watch Steffi and Ben puppeteering in a clip from their show Steffi’s Picnic.

As for Canadian Idol, Steffi seems to be really popular with Canada so far and she made the cut in to the show’s top ten tonight. If you live in Canada you can watch and cheer Steffi on Mondays and Tuesday at 8 p.m. and Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. on the CTV network in most markets.

Update: I posted this in a hurry late last night at an Internet Cafe and forgot to credit Kanja for being the one clever enough to figure to make the Steffi D / Steffi Didomenicantonio connection.