From Vanderbilt to Sesame Street

September 12, 2022 6:33 AM

Meet the First Black Woman Puppeteer on Sesame Street
posted by Etrigan (8 comments total)

This is great to see, and to say "about time" is beyond an understatement. To accomplish so many things as a young woman and then a gig on Sesame Street - it really must be like a dream come true. Thank you for this!
posted by 41swans at 6:39 AM on September 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Unlike most of the times when a BIPOC woman is the first to fill a high profile position, when I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that they haven't before, this time I am actually pretty genuinely surprised. Even many years back in my own childhood, Sesame Street had a lot of BIPOC cast members, so it seems really unexpected that they would never have had a black woman as a puppeteer.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:39 AM on September 12, 2022 [7 favorites]

Vogel, who voices Big Bird and Kermit the Frog

It irritates me when writers use the word “voice”to describe what the Muppet performers do. It’s much, much more than that. Makes it sound like they just go into a booth and record dialogue.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, yay! Peace sounds like a great performer, and just the kind of personality the show needs.

(In Jim Henson’s day, it was the rookie’s job to operate the right hand of two-handed puppets like Ernie and Cookie Monster. I wonder if it’s still that way.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:11 AM on September 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

The first one!??! I am flabbergasted. Sesame Street always parades their inclusive nature, about damn time definitely doesn't cover it. Wow.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:27 AM on September 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

That's really cool. My immediate thought was doing Muppet-style camera work has got to be extremely different than doing the back-and-forth ventriloquism like Edgar Bergen or the guy from the old Soap sitcom or Waylon Flowers and Madam. Like completely different concepts.

Thanks for posting and congrats. Ms. Peace.
posted by SoberHighland at 10:30 AM on September 12, 2022

Makes it sound like they just go into a booth and record dialogue.

Considering that's more or less the job of a voice actor; it's impressive enough.

Mark me down as another person who was expecting to see a retrospective on someone from the 70s rather than 50 years later....
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:20 PM on September 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Sesame Street always parades their inclusive nature, about damn time definitely doesn't cover it

Honestly, this seems like its good intentions versus structural issues. Compare her against the other puppeteer in the article. Megan Peace:

Peace graduated in 2014, subsequently earning her master’s in finance from Vanderbilt as well and beginning a professional career in real estate finance.

Matt Vogel :

Matt has a BFA in Theatre from The Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Webster University in St. Louis.

So it seems like the traditional path is to take on on expensive degree and hope for the best, while her own path came involved childhood training and a fallback plan in college.

In other words, she gave up a stable career to pursue a childhood dream, which is a pretty steep opportunity cost. I don't know either of their specific situations, but in general gambling on a BFA seems dicey without generational wealth to fall back on until it pans out. So the answer to "why was 2020 the first" the first answer seems to be "nobody in the black community thought a BFA with a $140k sticker price was a good idea."

Normally at this point in the conversation we'd ask why the hiring firm isn't doing more to address its pipeline problem, but it seems hard to accuse Sesame Street of underinvesting in the education of the underprivileged. So maybe we can skip right to the part where we ask the government to invest in its citizens instead of expecting individual action to solve our collective problems?
posted by pwnguin at 2:21 PM on September 12, 2022 [8 favorites]

Definitely long overdue, but still great to hear!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 3:19 PM on September 12, 2022