To kick off the new school and TV seasons the good folks at Sesame Workshop were kind enough to invite us into their home to get some insight into the collaboration that goes into producing the infamous Street. Sitting down with us was Rosemarie Truglio – SVP of Education and Research, SVP of Creative and Executive Producer Carol-Lynn Parente, Chrissy Ferraro – Show and Outreach Writer and moderator Nadine Zylstra – VP of Sesame Production.
So how does Sesame Street keep it all together collaboratively? Well for starters, they’ve had 43 years of practice. Carol-Lynn said she feels like the moderator between writing and research. Rosemary and her team develop the curriculum which is revised annually and she works closely with the content creators to make sure they’re hitting all their educational goals. In case you haven’t seen the show in awhile, the emphasis is on a STEM curriculum and this year it’s branching out to include the arts. But more on that later.
Research and production generally see outlines. It’s up to the head writer to determine when a script is ready to go to research. Carol-Lynn looks for any major issues and makes sure there’s a balance of characters and she monitors how many street stories and segments hit the curricular focus for that season. Rosemary is looking for the implementation of curriculum and is reading with the eye of a three-year-old – will they get the script?
In studio, research is on hand to raise any red flags that puppeteer improvising may cause. They used to monitor the studio feed from their offices and they had a red phone to call to the control room in case they had any issues. But production got into the habit of ignoring the red phone and so now someone from research is always on set.
Chrissy is on set to make last minute changes to script if the show is running over. They generally shoot 12-14 minutes of show a day and for every prop a puppet is handling you have to add 15 minutes to the shoot time (those rod puppets don’t actually just pick up phones and things you know – someone has to rig it up!).
Then we got a sneak peek at the new hotness on the Street: Elmo the Musical. Rosemary wanted to highlight the math aspect of STEM curriculum and they decided to use the arts as a tool to teach math. Chrissy said for her the new direction toward the arts is very freeing. We writer types aren’t always the best at math and science so sometimes (well, at least for me) we’re learning the lessons along with the characters. So check out the new season of Sesame Street, a show that’s been around for decades and never stops evolving. I hope someday someone can say the same about me.
Main Takeaway: No man is an island in children’s television. Curriculum and writing go hand in hand even if production has to step in sometimes and MAKE them hold hands. You can’t have one without the other. Same goes for production and research and writing and production. That’s a lot of hands!
Personal Takeaway: Just to show how seriously they take their curriculum, there was a story about how Super Grover hit a wall (as he does) and slid down. But in reality, in real life physics you’d bounce off the wall with the same force. So they changed it in the episode to get the science right. Now that is curricular dedication!
Inappropriate Takeaway: Someone said they shoot the Muppets in costumes first because it’s easier to undress them than it is to dress them. There’s something about undressing Muppets that seems inappropriate, no?
Children's Media Association 