November 29, 2023
Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia
Natasha Lance Rogoff
TV Producer, Award-winning Filmmaker, and Bestselling Author
Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia
Natasha Lance Rogoff
TV Producer, Award-winning Filmmaker, and Bestselling Author
Sandy Shapiro, introducer; Natasha Lance Rogoff, speaker; Priscilla Roosevelt, interlocutor
Minutes of the 12th Meeting of the 82nd Year
John Cotton, president, opened the meeting, and Julia Coale led the invocation. The minutes from the previous meeting were read by Julie Berry. There were several guests: Lee Burnham and Marlaine Lockheed (prospective member) were guests of Sandy Shapiro; Martin Miller and Sarah Rasmussen were guests of Len Berlik; Stephen Schreiber brought Ron Schnur and Sandy Sussman as guests. Mark Branon brought John Ryan as a guest and prospective member. One hundred people were in attendance. John Cotton announced the death of Claire Jacobus the previous evening, 28 November 2023, and a moment of silence was observed.
Natasha Lance Rogoff engaged in a conversation with Old Guard member Priscilla Roosevelt. The title of the talk was “Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia.” Natasha Rogoff is a film director and television producer. Her film Russia Millennials Speak Openly About America won an award in 2017 and is available on YouTube. Currently Natasha is an Associate Fellow in the Art, Film, and Visual Studies Department at Harvard University. Her book Muppets in Moscow is based on her experience bringing to life a Russian television version of Sesame Street in the 1990s.
Priscilla started the conversation by setting the scene in Russia in the early 1990s: The Soviet Union had recently broken apart, the ruble was greatly devalued and more than 50% of the population of Russia lived in poverty, while a very tiny portion of the country was very wealthy. Against this backdrop there was a lot of crime and violence. How did Natasha get there?
Natasha noted that she had been living in Russia since 1982 as part of a U.S.-Soviet student exchange program. She studied the Russian language in college and is fluent (although she later noted she speaks with a Georgian accent). The 1990s were a time of enormous transition and, more than once during her talk, Natasha mentioned parallels between what she experienced in the 1990s and what is going on in Russia today.
She had been making documentary films in Russia for about 10 years when the New York-based Sesame Street executives approached her after seeing her film Russia for Sale: The Rough Road to Capitalism. Even though she had no experience working with children, these executives felt she was the right person to bring a Russian Sesame Street to life and realize their goal of modeling idealistic western values and serving as ambassadors to provide skills for Russian children and their families to help them thrive in this new open society. The sensibility was to have a television set and characters that would be completely new and unique to the Russian show.
Her first inclination was to say no, but after realizing how serious these executives were about the project and learning that they had secured partial funding through USAID, she saw this as an incredible opportunity to executive produce, run the show, and work with hundreds of talented people in Russia. So, she said yes. But Natasha insisted that, rather than partnering with a local TV station, as Sesame Street usually did when they worked internationally, she wanted to work independently, “which was nuts” as she herself admitted. But she felt that the local workers would have more freedom if they weren’t working under a state-owned TV station.
Natasha admitted that she had seriously underestimated the challenges of the project, which ranged from potential funders being murdered, or so seriously injured they withdrew from the project, to severely misunderstanding the Russian culture and its implications for the show, to being caught up in the violence as the political landscape as Russia changed hands.
Natasha enlivened the conversation with many examples of these challenges. For example, early on she was excited to make headway with several oligarchs who agreed to provide Russian funding for the show (which in Russian was called Ulitsa Sezam) only to have one seriously injured in a car bombing and another murdered on his own doorstep. Her misunderstanding of the Russian culture manifested itself in many ways, especially during the development of the Russian Muppets, which she wanted to be based on historical or folkloric Russian characters. Alas, these tended not to be good exemplars of the Sesame Street message, and the older male writers on the show had to be educated by the younger (and the American) writers to think beyond traditional gender roles and characteristics.
Another manifestation of culture clash occurred when Natasha held a curriculum seminar that brought together educators from across the country to decide what goals the show should have and what the children should be taught. She mentioned that, in the U.S. show, a character has a lemonade stand that teaches a variety of valuable skills. The Russian creative team was horrified and told her that in Russia that could not happen, because the only people who sell things on the street are criminals and the Mafia.
Priscilla asked Natasha what she thought the long-term impact of Ulitsa Sezam has been. Natasha noted that the show lasted for ten years and educated millions of children. She has since done interviews with a few of these now grown-up children and they have told her they are very grateful for having had the opportunity to watch the show; some have said their children have watched it. Natasha thinks the legacy of the show is that it is still popular.
Natasha returned to Russia in 2020 and had dinner with the former director of the show. He said that, if they were doing the show today, he wasn’t sure they could achieve the same lightness and affection on that set, because over the years “we’ve become a more rational, more closed society and life has changed. It’s a different country now.” Natasha knows that many of her former colleagues are protesting the war in Ukraine on social media; many have left the country, and those who have stayed are terrified.
During the Q and A someone asked how the show ended. Natasha said that in 2010 there were increasing crackdowns on independent media and a desire by television executives to have more state influence on the show. The Director of Research on the show was fired and the rest of the team quit in solidarity. And that was the end of Ulitsa Sezam.
Respectfully submitted,
Sarah Ringer
John Cotton, president, opened the meeting, and Julia Coale led the invocation. The minutes from the previous meeting were read by Julie Berry. There were several guests: Lee Burnham and Marlaine Lockheed (prospective member) were guests of Sandy Shapiro; Martin Miller and Sarah Rasmussen were guests of Len Berlik; Stephen Schreiber brought Ron Schnur and Sandy Sussman as guests. Mark Branon brought John Ryan as a guest and prospective member. One hundred people were in attendance. John Cotton announced the death of Claire Jacobus the previous evening, 28 November 2023, and a moment of silence was observed.
Natasha Lance Rogoff engaged in a conversation with Old Guard member Priscilla Roosevelt. The title of the talk was “Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia.” Natasha Rogoff is a film director and television producer. Her film Russia Millennials Speak Openly About America won an award in 2017 and is available on YouTube. Currently Natasha is an Associate Fellow in the Art, Film, and Visual Studies Department at Harvard University. Her book Muppets in Moscow is based on her experience bringing to life a Russian television version of Sesame Street in the 1990s.
Priscilla started the conversation by setting the scene in Russia in the early 1990s: The Soviet Union had recently broken apart, the ruble was greatly devalued and more than 50% of the population of Russia lived in poverty, while a very tiny portion of the country was very wealthy. Against this backdrop there was a lot of crime and violence. How did Natasha get there?
Natasha noted that she had been living in Russia since 1982 as part of a U.S.-Soviet student exchange program. She studied the Russian language in college and is fluent (although she later noted she speaks with a Georgian accent). The 1990s were a time of enormous transition and, more than once during her talk, Natasha mentioned parallels between what she experienced in the 1990s and what is going on in Russia today.
She had been making documentary films in Russia for about 10 years when the New York-based Sesame Street executives approached her after seeing her film Russia for Sale: The Rough Road to Capitalism. Even though she had no experience working with children, these executives felt she was the right person to bring a Russian Sesame Street to life and realize their goal of modeling idealistic western values and serving as ambassadors to provide skills for Russian children and their families to help them thrive in this new open society. The sensibility was to have a television set and characters that would be completely new and unique to the Russian show.
Her first inclination was to say no, but after realizing how serious these executives were about the project and learning that they had secured partial funding through USAID, she saw this as an incredible opportunity to executive produce, run the show, and work with hundreds of talented people in Russia. So, she said yes. But Natasha insisted that, rather than partnering with a local TV station, as Sesame Street usually did when they worked internationally, she wanted to work independently, “which was nuts” as she herself admitted. But she felt that the local workers would have more freedom if they weren’t working under a state-owned TV station.
Natasha admitted that she had seriously underestimated the challenges of the project, which ranged from potential funders being murdered, or so seriously injured they withdrew from the project, to severely misunderstanding the Russian culture and its implications for the show, to being caught up in the violence as the political landscape as Russia changed hands.
Natasha enlivened the conversation with many examples of these challenges. For example, early on she was excited to make headway with several oligarchs who agreed to provide Russian funding for the show (which in Russian was called Ulitsa Sezam) only to have one seriously injured in a car bombing and another murdered on his own doorstep. Her misunderstanding of the Russian culture manifested itself in many ways, especially during the development of the Russian Muppets, which she wanted to be based on historical or folkloric Russian characters. Alas, these tended not to be good exemplars of the Sesame Street message, and the older male writers on the show had to be educated by the younger (and the American) writers to think beyond traditional gender roles and characteristics.
Another manifestation of culture clash occurred when Natasha held a curriculum seminar that brought together educators from across the country to decide what goals the show should have and what the children should be taught. She mentioned that, in the U.S. show, a character has a lemonade stand that teaches a variety of valuable skills. The Russian creative team was horrified and told her that in Russia that could not happen, because the only people who sell things on the street are criminals and the Mafia.
Priscilla asked Natasha what she thought the long-term impact of Ulitsa Sezam has been. Natasha noted that the show lasted for ten years and educated millions of children. She has since done interviews with a few of these now grown-up children and they have told her they are very grateful for having had the opportunity to watch the show; some have said their children have watched it. Natasha thinks the legacy of the show is that it is still popular.
Natasha returned to Russia in 2020 and had dinner with the former director of the show. He said that, if they were doing the show today, he wasn’t sure they could achieve the same lightness and affection on that set, because over the years “we’ve become a more rational, more closed society and life has changed. It’s a different country now.” Natasha knows that many of her former colleagues are protesting the war in Ukraine on social media; many have left the country, and those who have stayed are terrified.
During the Q and A someone asked how the show ended. Natasha said that in 2010 there were increasing crackdowns on independent media and a desire by television executives to have more state influence on the show. The Director of Research on the show was fired and the rest of the team quit in solidarity. And that was the end of Ulitsa Sezam.
Respectfully submitted,
Sarah Ringer