My Life as a Furry Red Monster - Kevin Clash [20]
Elmo began pulling out imaginary pairs of socks and holding them up for Luis and the audience. Then he pulled out a few shirts, pairs of underwear, pajamas, and a whole host of necessities for his travels. Luis kept looking to the camera with one eyebrow lifted and a smile creasing his face, just going along with Elmo’s flights of fancy. Little did any of us know just how overstuffed Elmo’s imagination would turn out to be.
Each time I dipped Elmo’s head so he could reach deeper into that imaginary suitcase, it was as if I were reaching deeper inside my own experiences as a child, thinking of the games we invented and the fun we had playing creatively. I also thought of other children, especially a memorable little boy named Ryan who was a regular at Mom’s daycare. Ryan was a super-animated bundle. I decided that Elmo was going to be a lot like him.
As the cameras rolled, I was prepared to be the highest-energy three-and-a-half-year-old ever. I let myself go and felt an instant connection to Elmo. No longer was I channeling a version of Ryan or any other child. I was fully in the moment, inhabiting the mind and expressing the emotions of a little red monster who was determined to be fully prepared for his imaginary trip.
Though we stuck to the script and got the show’s curriculum goals accomplished, before I knew it I was pulling a few things out of my own imagination and Elmo was tugging them out of his suitcase. After Snooks the floor manager yelled, “Cut,” I saw our cameraman Frank Biondo laughing, and I knew I was on to something. Elmo and I were clicking. I could never have predicted how big the Elmo phenomenon would grow to be, but every journey, real or imagined, starts with a few tentative steps, and like most children, I took those first steps at home.
DRAWING, LIKE PUPPET-MAKING, was a childhood passion that gave me a sense of control, a feeling that I was able to master my environment, which is a crucial component of growing up. Think about toddlers’ first successes at walking on their own or feeding themselves, the insistent “Me do it” that peppers most of their sentences as they attempt to do things without a grown-up’s help, and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.
For me, being able to put down on paper something that previously existed only in my imagination was a pleasure, but it also gave me confidence—the confidence I needed to take even greater creative risks and strides. Even now, each success I have as a performer and artist feeds my desire to try new things and push the boundaries of my creativity.
In school, art earned me the positive attention that I craved as a child. Teachers recognized my creative ability, and I was constantly asked to illustrate the bulletin boards that decorated the classroom. Whether the theme was the first day of spring or something we were studying, I was selected to bring those images to life. I wasn’t always the best student, but my teachers appreciated my skills (as well as the fact that I didn’t doodle during lessons).
I drew, I imagined, and then I built the puppets that were beginning to fill every square inch of my space in our shared bedroom and overflowing onto yellow shelves in my parents’ bedroom. The Clash kids were being crowded out by heaps of fur, jars of buttons for eyes, chunks of foam, and puppets with names like Skylow, Bartee, Moandy, Rocky, and Artie. (Sometimes I named my puppets for friends or people I knew—Bartee was named for a crazy-funny kid named Tony Bartee, and Skylow for a super-cool classmate with the tallest Afro.)
By the time I was a teenager, I was known around the community as the kid with the puppets. Often I was asked to perform at school, for fundraising events, at fairs, cultural festivals, and other venues, and even on a locally produced children’s television show, where my old shy self would vanish once I had a puppet