Russian muppets Businka and Kubik pose with little one actress Katya Mikhailovskaya.
Courtesy of Tatiana Mikhailovska
When the Russian model of “Sesame Road” (“Ulitsa Sezam”) first aired in Russia in October 1996, there was a premiere occasion at a Moscow theater. The star muppet got here out — Zeliboba, an 8ft hound-like animal tree spirit who may scent music and was even taller than Large Hen, his American counterpart. “The youngsters went wild,” remembers government producer Natasha Lance Rogoff.
Rogoff’s new e-book, “Muppets in Moscow: The Surprising Loopy True Story of Making Sesame Road in Russia” (Rowman & Littlefield) recounts the 5-year journey of bringing “Sesame Road” to post-Soviet Russia, and adapting it to a Russian viewers.
“There have been so many challenges. The worst of it was at first when our first investor’s automobile was blown up and I had been in that automobile 3 weeks earlier than,” says Rogoff. “Over the following yr, our broadcast companions had been assassinated one after the opposite. I had grow to be shut to those folks.”
Over time, Rogoff assembled a staff of over 400 Moscow-based artists: filmmakers, writers, puppeteers, set designers, and musicians. “The folks I labored with had been enthusiastic about their want to enhance the lives of kids by way of the television present,” says Rogoff.
Nonetheless, there have been the tradition clashes round present programming and content material.
“We had been all throwing round concepts about what the present ought to train post-Soviet kids about tolerance, and methods to survive of their budding free market. I advised a scene during which kids run a lemonade stand,” she says. “This suggestion was met with horror. One man stated, ‘It will be shameful to indicate kids promoting items on the road!’ One other stated, ‘Solely criminals try this!’ One physicist stated, ‘You're tasking us with arising with a curriculum for a present that may assist our kids thrive in an open society. However we don’t know what an open society seems to be like. On the finish of the convention he stated, ‘I assumed this was hopeless, however I didn’t understand that by bringing collectively all these totally different factors of view, we had been capable of provide you with a curriculum that suited our values and historical past.”
“Ulitsa Sezam” went off the air sooner or later within the mid-2000s, as Vladimir Putin elevated management over unbiased tv.
“I’m actually happy with my staff and all the things we achieved,” says Rogoff. “It’s unattainable now to have Sesame Road in Russia, however I hope sometime that we get the prospect to do this once more.”
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