Being Elmo

I found this post that I wrote ages ago, but I seem to have neglected to publish it.  It's a review of another movie from the Bloor Cinema's opening week as Hot Docs theatre  in Toronto.


Kevin Clash is a man who has lived his dream.   As a young boy growing up in a poorish neighbourhood in Baltimore, he fell in love with puppets.  His first romance was with Captain Kangaroo, but Sesame Street brought his passion to full flower.  Sesame Street looked like a place he could live, and oh, those puppets were absolutely wonderful.

So Kevin started making puppets himself.  An early visit with Kermit Love broke open some of the secrets of a great puppeteer, like how did you make a puppet where the seams didn't show.  Through Kermit's mentorship, he found his way to Sesame Street, his dream home.


Clash just fell into being Elmo. Another puppeteer on the show just didn't relate to the puppet and threw it to Clash with the words 'you try to do something with it'.  Clash turned the puppet into a symbol of love.  But more than that, he just became Elmo.  His warm, all-encompassing smile and voice brings Elmo to life.  He is now Executive Producer of Sesame Street, and is greeted all over the world with delighted recognition - and yes love - from Elmo's many fans.

TED 2011 and the Theatre

‘Pieces of emotional engineering’ – that’s how the founders of Handspring describe their puppets.  Their magnificent puppet of a full size horse, designed for the London play War Horse, delighted the audience and made us suspend disbelief as the horse.  Some fabric draped over a bent cane frame snorted, pawed the ground, and 'galloped' across the stage.  Two people working under the horse, and a groom at the neck, manipulate the legs, neck, even the diaphragm to simulate breathing.  War Horse is the story of a horse drafted by the army in the First World War and the young boy who signed up to follow him to France.  There was a short video showing a troop of horses charging in the London production.  I had War Horse already on my reading list; now the play is also on my must-see list.

In a later session, we heard from Julie Taymor, the theatre director who brought us the mesmerizing Lion King production.  Her discussion of her personal career path through the theatre world was sprinkled with wonderful clips of some of her work, including Spider Man: Turn off the Dark, currently running on Broadway to resoundingly bad reviews.

For me, the highlight was reliving the rapt enjoyment I felt when I first saw Lion King.  However, Taymor was somewhat overshadowed by the previous presentation about War Horse, with the actual puppet on stage.