Growing green: Sesame Street Live planting seeds of eco-awareness

By Diana Nollen

It's getting easier to be green.

Big Bird and his buddies are jumping on the eco-friendly bandwagon, with “Elmo's Green Thumb” leading the way.

The newest Sesame Street Live production will plant itself in the U.S. Cellular Center for three performances May 11 and 12, 2010. A

udiences will follow Elmo's adventures as he tries to find a new home for Sunny, the sunflower he raised from a seed in a pot that's grown too small. Big Bird's garden offers room galore, but everything goes awry when an impatient fairy-in-training named Abby Cadabby casts a growth spell that backfires. Instead of making Sunny reach for the sky, it makes Elmo and friends shrink, giving them a bug's-eye view of the garden.

The show's lessons are “very ‘going green' heavy,” says Matt Jones, 38, of Boston, who portrays human Muppet Bert. “Kids will learn about ecology and recycling. There's a whole number where Elmo meets a couple of beetles whose job is to break things down that fall into the garden. Anything to do with environmentalism they're going to learn.”

Jones is making his third trip to Cedar Rapids, having stopped here with “My Little Pony” in 2007 and last year's Sesame Street Live production, “When Elmo Grows Up.”

He says this show is a bit of a departure from the previous Sesame Street productions that have come through town.

“This one is different from the others. It has more of a plot and the style of music is different,” he says by phone from a recent tour stop in Indianapolis. “It's a little more modern, a little more hip-hop kind of music and dance. You're going to see something a little different from Sesame Street Live shows, but it's a lot of fun to do.”

Adults will have fun, too, he says.

“A lot of the jokes are specifically directed at Mom and Dad” and they'll recognize the music, he says. “It's good '60s stuff - lots of flower power.”

His favorite to perform is a takeoff on Marvin Gaye's “What's Going On,” involving Big Bird, Bert and Ernie. Other tunes sport titles in keeping with the green theme, from “Rain, Rain Go Away” and the “I Love Trash Medley” to “Garden Cha-Cha” and “Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes.”

All that movin' and groovin' turns up the heat for the actors buried under layers of fur and fleece.

“(Venues) try and keep the temperature turned down for us,” Jones says. “Patrons say, ‘Wow, it's cold in here,' but it's just right for us. We have giant industrial fans backstage. When we're not onstage, we run for that fan.”

The costumes present other challenges, as well.

“You can see, but your field of vision is limited,” he says. “The first time I put it on last year, I thought, ‘What have I gotten myself into?' You get used to the limited vision. It now feels very natural.”

He's never fallen off the stage, but has had a couple of close calls.

“You've got to be very aware of where the edge (of the stage) is,” he exclaims.

The physical factor plays a big part in the roles, in which actors dance, prance and move their character's mouth without uttering a word. Dialogue and songs are prerecorded by the actual Sesame Street television actors.

Jones, who earned a BFA in theater from the University of Bridgeport (Conn.) in 1992, says bringing a Muppet to life requires a different kind of stamina than the usual musical theater role.

Bert is more of a secondary character in this show, so he says it's “not quite as challenging physically as the others.” But he got a workout on last year's tour.

“‘When Elmo Grows Up' is well-known as the hardest,” he says. “It's a big-time cardio workout. Last year, Bert and Ernie featured a lot of running around, so this is a little bit of a breather for me this year. You work everything, especially cardio. You're moving around a lot. With all those layers, it's sweaty. Your air intake is just as limited as your vision, so this has increased my lung capacity, too.”

He and other cast members keep up their stamina by working out in hotel gyms and eating like long-distance runners, with a diet he says is “heavy in protein and carbs.”

It's all worth it for this actor who grew up immersed in community theater.

“Some of my earliest memories are playing in the back of the auditorium while my parents rehearsed,” he says. “There was never any doubt in my mind that I was going to do anything else.”

When this tour ends in mid-June, he'll have a few weeks off, then he's hoping to come back and do another year with Sesame Street Live.

“I love life on the road, I really do,” he says. “It's also Sesame Street - something we all grew up with. It's an incredible thing to be part of. In Connecticut, we were invited to go down and tour the television set. It had everything you've seen: the front stoop, Oscar's trash can. It's such an iconic show with such iconic characters. Just getting to be a part of that is very rewarding.

“I won't do it forever, but as long as my body can stand up to the pounding, I'll keep doing it.”

FAST TAKE

What: Sesame Street Live presents “Elmo's Green Thumb”

When: 7 p.m. May 11, 2010; 10:30 a.m. and 7 p.m. May 12, 2010

Where: U.S. Cellular Center, 307 First Ave. NE, Cedar Rapids

Tickets: $12.75 to $27.75 through the U.S. Cellular Center Ticket Office, all Ticketmaster outlets, 1-(800) 745-3000 or www.ticketmaster.com/venue/49260?brand=uscellularcenter

Information: www.uscellularcenter.com and www.sesamestreetlive.com

FUN FACTS

History

• Sesame Street Live celebrates its 30th tour season in 2009-10. It premiered on September 17, 1980, at the Met Center in Bloomington, Minn., and is the longest running touring show for children in history.
• More than 50 million children and their parents have seen Sesame Street Live worldwide. The shows have been staged on five continents in more than 30 countries beyond the United States, including Latin America, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Europe, the Middle East, Asia/Southeast Asia and Australia.

Touring

• A portion of every ticket sold goes to Sesame Workshop to fund educational programs for children at home and around the world.
• Each tour is a multimillion dollar production.
• Each tour travels nearly 20,000 miles in a given season, the equivalent of crossing the country six times. The average distance between cities is 350 miles.
• A typical tour includes 28 people: 17 performers, eight crew members, a company manager, an assistant company manager and a performance director.

Costumes

• Big Bird is made from 4,000 custom-dyed turkey feathers. Each feather is individually hand sewn to a piece of yellow organdy fabric before being attached to the costume.
• All of the characters' shoes are made of latex and cast in large plaster molds. Bert and Ernie wear size 15 shoes.
• Performers range in height from 4 feet 10 inches to 6 feet 2 inches, as Sesame Street Live Muppets range in height from 5 feet (Elmo) to 8 feet 2 inches (Big Bird).
• Abby Cadabby's skirt has 50 individual fabric panels and 100 sequins.
• Zoe's tutu consists of 15 yards of fabric stitched in seven separate layers.
• Ernie's sweater is knit from 2.2 pounds of cotton yarn - equal to nearly one mile of yarn.

Backstage

• In addition to the traveling crew, 10 to 15 local stagehands are hired in each city to unload, setup, run and tear down the show.
• On average, the entire show is setup (“load-in”) in seven to eight hours. Following the last performance, everything is loaded back into the trailers (“load-out”) in three to four hours.