My Life as a Furry Red Monster - Kevin Clash [38]
And of course, there was Juggles the Juggler, perhaps our most spectacular failure. I puppeteered the head of the character and we found a talented performance artist named Fred Garbo to do the juggling while squatting just under the camera’s frame. Talk about tough! Trying to coordinate my actions with Fred’s was next to impossible. Fred was the best, but this was asking too much. We spent most of our time in rehearsal rounding up dropped balls, stumbling over one another, and flubbing lines of dialogue—just try concentrating on what you’re saying when you’ve got balls flying around your head.
Knowing when to admit you’re in over your head takes courage. I played nine characters on Sesame Street at one time or another, and three—Elmo, Hoots the Owl, and Natasha—were successful. A .333 batting average is great in baseball and pretty good in puppetry.
I learned a lot from flopping—that overly ambitious acts like Juggles were hard to pull off, that some characters just didn’t click with us or the viewers no matter how clever they were (perhaps too clever), and that maybe The Honeymooners is an acquired taste. Most of all, I learned that you can’t be afraid to fail, because you never know true success unless you have a flop or two (or six).
BECAUSE SESAME STREET is filmed in New York (just across the East River at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens), we all felt the impact of the events of September 11, 2001. In those surreal days following the attacks, we sought solace with one another amid the constant reminders—on television, on street corners, and in subway stations where “Have You Seen?” notices flapped like prayer flags. We struggled ourselves to regain some semblance of normalcy while fighter jets circled and the rubble of what was once our lives smoldered.
We also knew that children everywhere, not just in New York and Washington, were profoundly affected by those terrible days. No matter how hard we tried to protect our children, the images in the papers and on TV were unrelenting, and the grown-up conversation swirling around young ears inevitably would drift to the nightmarish scenarios that had become all too real.
At Sesame Street, the producers quickly decided we needed to do something to help kids come to terms with the loss—whether it was the loss of a loved one or a loss of innocence. The writers, producers, director, and cast created several new episodes to model behaviors that could make a real and immediate difference in the lives of children.
One episode dealt with Elmo and his fearful reaction to a fire. As adults we understand how heroic firefighters are, and 9/11 brought that message home intensely. But though kids are taught that firefighters are brave and helpful, many are afraid of the men and women who might one day save their lives. In a chaotic situation like a fire, with rescuers dressed in bulky outfits and wearing monstrous-looking oxygen masks that hide their faces, children have been known to hide or run away.
Elmo was having lunch in Mr. Hooper’s store with Maria. Alan (played by Alan Muraoka), who runs the store, was cooking fried chicken in the kitchen when a grease fire broke out. The cast modeled fire safety strategies, with Elmo and Maria (played by Sonia Manzano) staying low, and getting out of the building.
Both in the studio and on location, we used real New York City firefighters, many of whom were just months removed from having lost brothers and sisters in the department. Despite their enormous suffering, they were glad for the diversion as well as the role they played in reassuring Elmo, and our children, that despite their potentially