This Brookfield native has played some of your favorite 'Sesame Street' characters for almost 40 years (original) (raw)

In 1980, Martin P. Robinson, a puppeteer who grew up in Brookfield, applied to "Sesame Street."

"Back then, you sent everyone your picture and resume," Robinson, 65, laughed.

A year later, he and about 300 other people were contacted to audition for the show at the Ansonia Hotel in New York City.

At the end of each day of auditions, he was told to come back the next day. By the fifth day, there were only 25 people left, he said. Then, it dropped to five.

"It turned out there was one job they were hiring for, and that was the job of Snuffleupagus," he said.

Certain requirements had to be met, including being strong with a good back, at least 6 feet tall, and having a deep voice to be able to recreate the voice the original Snuffy puppeteer, the late Jerry Nelson, had done.

During Robinson's seventh or eighth audition, he climbed inside the Mr. Snuffleupagus skin for the first time.

"I just love Snuff ... He's wonderful, and he's eloquent in his own way, and he just loves his best friend so much, just loves (Big) Bird, and the relationship between them is so sweet and pure," he said.

After his last audition, he didn't hear anything. That is, until he received a schedule for the upcoming season of "Sesame Street" in the mail.

He called the company to ask why he had gotten one and was informed he got the part.

In addition to Snuffy, Robinson plays Telly Monster, Slimey the Worm, the Martians AKA the Yip Yips, Old MacDonald and Frazzle.

Yes, he does have a favorite to play. It's Telly.

"He's a very complex little guy, which makes for wonderful scripts and relationships, and all kinds of interesting problems and even more interesting solutions," he said. "As a performer or actor, it's a very complex character to do."

Withstanding the test of time

Complexity is something "Sesame Street" has never shied away from during its 50 years on air.

"The show has always evolved and changed," Robinson said. "It's always risen to the challenge, whatever challenges there are."

The show has tackled the subjects of divorce, sexual identity, HIV, homelessness, deployment, autism, having a parent who is incarcerated, having a single parent and breaking communication barriers by teaching Spanish and sign language.

"They're breaking ground in every way," Robinson said. "Whatever kids need, we're here for that."

The show is celebrating its 50th anniversary Nov. 10 and will begin filming season 51 in January.

"I'm very proud to be a member of 'Sesame Street' and their way of taking on the world in a very kind, gentle, but firm way," he said.

A day on set

During production, Robinson wakes up at his home in Redding, Connecticut, at 5 a.m. to make it to the permanent set of "Sesame Street" at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens by 8:15 a.m.

"It's so much fun," he said. "I get to do these wonderful scripts with these great characters, and laugh and have a great time with my best friends all day long. As far as dream jobs go, that's right up there."

Robinson said he has to have the script memorized going into the shoot.

"You look at the script and perform the script the way it was intended, then you bring your own spin on it, your own self, your own joys and passions and loves, and personality into the performance," he said. "Your hands just do what they need to do."

There's a read-through, a walk-through on camera, then filming begins.

Since it's a three-camera shoot, he said part of the technique is knowing when to play to each camera.

"With puppetry, you have to rehearse on camera ... you're composing and performing based on what you see in the monitor," he said.

When asked if his arms get tired from using them all day, he said, "the musculature is the easiest thing in the world."

"What's hard is maintaining the excitement of a character," he said.

If there's a scene where the character starts excited and that story is being shot throughout the day, he has to maintain that excitement throughout.

"Kids are smart," he said. "If you're slogging through and not having a good time, it will show in the work."

Not the norm

New puppeteers don't typically step straight into a major or classic character role like Robinson.

"It was a little unusual for how things run these days," he said.

When new puppeteers are brought in for "Sesame Street," he said they usually start as a right hand for characters that have working mouths and practical hands, like Oscar the Grouch, Ernie and Cookie Monster.

"The lead puppeteer's right hand is in Cookie Monster's head and the puppeteer's left hand is in Cookie Monster's left hand, and then there's an assistant, a second puppeteer who works Cookie Monster's right hand," he said.

From there, the puppeteer works into background or one-off characters.

"If things work out, and you're in the right place at the right time when we need a new character, the puppeteers would get cast in a new character," he said.

His career worked the other way around.

"While I was handling the duties of the main character, I was really learning my craft with doing Cookie Monster's right hand and Kermit the Frog's right hand, and anything else that needed doing," he said.

Training puppeteers

For the past 20 years, Robinson has traveled all over the world, hiring and training puppeteers for international television productions of "Sesame Street."

"They're all locally produced, but there is an amount of oversight from the parent company," he said. "One of the oversights is if you're doing 'Sesame Street,' you get Muppets, and if you get Muppets, you get me."

This role has taken him to Mexico, Canada, Ireland, Spain, Egypt, Russia, Portugal, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, China, Japan, Australia and Brazil. His last stint was last year in the United Arab Emirates, and his next will be in Germany in December.

He said usually 50 or 60 hopefuls are selected from hundreds of applicants.

"You run them through the drills, you see who has that crazy, iconic, classic Muppets spark, and see who can take to the training," he said.

Some of these workshops are co-run by his wife, Annie Evans, who wrote for the "Sesame Street" TV program, and continues writing live stage shows for the company.

"She's training the writers to write in the 'Sesame' style, and I'm training the puppeteers," Robinson said. "Then, we bring our workshops together. Her writers write things for my new puppeteers, and my puppeteers perform stuff that the writers have just written. We kind of work off of each other."

The two met at the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, about 16 years ago when he was on staff and she was an artist-in-residence.

"We were always friends and colleagues, but it changed after a while," he said. "I finally got how delightful she was."

They married 11 years ago and now have 10-year-old twins. Robinson has three kids from a previous marriage, and two grandsons.

What else he's up to

From March through September, Robinson shot for "Helpsters," a program for the new streaming service Apple TV Plus in conjunction with "Sesame Street."

"We're starting characters from scratch, which is great fun," he said. "That's my favorite."

Later this month, Robinson goes into production for "The Not Too Late Show with Elmo," a "Sesame Street" spinoff that will be available through HBO Max, then PBS.

Robinson spent the last 10 years writing the musical "All Hallows Eve" with Emmy-award winner Paul Rudolph, a composer on "Sesame Street."

"It was the production of a lifetime for me," Robinson said.

He wrote, directed, built and cast the show, which ran Oct. 18-Nov. 3 at the Connelly Theater in New York City.

"There's humans in it and puppets playing the more fantastical characters," he said. "They just act together."

This concept of integrating humans and puppets was similar to what was done in "Little Shop of Horrors," in which Robinson built and played Audrey II, a giant carnivorous plant, in the original 1982 production, and the Broadway revival in 2003.

"It was one of the first times anyone had written a puppetry-animated character that was very much part of the show, an actor in her own right in the cast, not just a gimmick or prop," he said. "That was the real gift of that project, how integrated that character is with the other actors and the storyline."

Where it all began

"Halloween was kind of my doorway into performing," Robinson said. "You get that little taste of freedom from self, freedom from what you should be, what your parents or society dictates to you."

In fifth grade, he discovered "Dick Smith's Do It Yourself Monster Make-Up." Smith won the Academy Award for Best Makeup for his work on Amadeus in 1985.

"It was my bible for a while," Robinson laughed. "I learned his techniques and was able to raise the level of turning myself into something else to a greater degree."

While he was a student at Brookfield East High School, he performed in theater productions at his school, the Waukesha Civic Theater and other local companies.

"I went wherever I could find anyone that would put me on a stage," he said.

After graduating in 1972, he moved to New York City to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

"I was a shy kid growing up," he said. "Acting was a way of getting outside of myself, being something different, picking out a different persona, not being responsible for the things I was saying and doing. I just loved the idea of taking on another personality."

Becoming a puppeteer

Robinson graduated from AADA in 1974, and in '75 he auditioned for his first puppet company.

"I was qualified because I had a driver's license and they were a touring company," he laughed.

Up until that point, the extent of his experience with puppetry was using a marionette his dad brought from Mexico when he was 5 to mess with the family cat, and playing with hand puppets as a kid.

He was hired and went on a 23-week tour for "Jack and the Beanstalk."

"I was young, wet behind the ears, enthusiastic and could come up with a voice or two, and was eager to learn," he said.

He spent the next two years working with Bil Baird, whose works included the puppetry sequence for "The Lonely Goatherd" in "The Sound of Music."

Robinson did 10 half-hour shows of "Once Upon a Dragon" a day for seven months at the Reynolds Aluminum Theater in Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

"It's a great way to learn your craft, pay your dues," he said. "I was making $125 a week; that was big money back in 1975."

The art of puppetry

Robinson wasn't just a performer with Baird, he was also an assistant and builder, which was right up his alley.

"I really developed an appreciation for the art of puppetry," Robinson said. "The fact that they didn't have to be little people or exact representations of humans or animals. They could be really anything you dreamed up."

Besides a passion for performance, he had developed a love for sculpture making during high school.

"It was drawing, designing and building things, inventing things kind of, making funny little mechanics and things," he said. "All these things I had been interested in are all things that work very specifically in and around the puppetry business."

After his time with Baird, he said, he puppeteered for numerous other companies, including The Public Theater in New York City.

"You pick up what you can, you pick up what you like," he said. "You disregard what you don't like, and eventually you develop a sense of your own style and the things that are important to you."

Contact Hannah Kirby at hannah.kirby@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HannahHopeKirby.