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Where the Air Is Sweet

  at the outset, the show's primary mission was to help inner-city children learn, so it would require a familiar setting. Why not a Harlem street scene: a concrete stoop in front of a brownstone, metal trash cans, people of all colors? Those humans would coexist with monsters of all kinds, created by paragon of […]

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at the outset, the show's primary mission was to help inner-city children learn, so it would require a familiar setting. Why not a Harlem street scene: a concrete stoop in front of a brownstone, metal trash cans, people of all colors? Those humans would coexist with monsters of all kinds, created by paragon of puppetry Jim Henson and originally conceived as bit players. After some trial and error (and over the objections of most social scientists), it was decided that the interaction between the two—the people who represented the audience's reality and the Muppets who tickled their imagination and funny bone—would be at the heart of the program.

'The trick is to teach the kids complex things but find simple ways to do that.'From the first words of the pilot episode—a grown-up telling a pigtailed girl, "Sally, you've never seen a street like Sesame Street"—the show was a critical and cultural darling. Within a year of that November 1969 premiere on CBS, Big Bird was on the cover of Time. Dr. Benjamin Spock predicted the program would result in "better trained citizens, fewer unemployables in the next generation, fewer people on welfare, and smaller jail populations." Of course, not everyone was impressed. Cornell psychology professor Urie Bronfenbrenner '38, cofounder of Head Start, believed the show's children were too well-behaved and its adults too conflict-free. "The old, the ugly, or the unwanted is simply made to disappear through a manhole," he told Psychology Today in 1970. However, as Michael Davis writes in his definitive history, Street Gang, "The show had critics aplenty, but the American people had spoken, and what they said was, 'Me like cookie!'"

By the time Ward arrived at "Sesame Street" in 1982, some nine million American children under the age of six were watching the show daily. But she hadn't aspired to put words in the mouths of Muppets; what she really wanted to be was a novelist. Ward grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, the daughter of a freelance writer and a magazine ad salesman. (She was a fan of "Captain Kangaroo"—something of a precursor to "Sesame Street" in that it gave the nas-cent show the core of its early creative team.) After earning a BA in English at Cornell and a master's in English literature from NYU, Ward took a job as a producer of TV and radio commercials, trying to find free time to write. But that proved elusive, so at twenty-six she switched gears. Her aunt had a cousin, Dulcy Singer, who happened to be a "Sesame Street" executive producer. Ward approached her about a job in production. There weren't any. Before leaving, Ward asked, "Do you ever hire writers?"

These days, only twenty-six new episodes air each year, so just nine or ten writers are given annual contracts. But back then there were 130 shows annually, and "Sesame Street" was always looking for new writing talent. Singer told Ward to spend a month studying the show—how the comedy is driven by character and not jokes, how it's not only cross-cultural but also multi-generational (designed for parents and children to watch together). "It's a very specific kind of writing," Ward says. "You can be a brilliant writer and not be able to write for 'Sesame Street.' But I saw it and knew I could do it."

A month later, Ward returned with four "inserts"—those stand-alone Muppet-centered pieces that were traditionally interspersed with the street scenes. Soon after, Singer called her and said, "This is exactly what we do." Two of the inserts eventually aired on the show—which, says Ward, "I later realized was like winning the lottery." But when she was asked to write a full show, she bombed. "It was terrible," she recalls. "They threw it away."

For two years, Ward essentially auditioned for a spot on the writing staff. It took her that long to understand the nuances of a "Sesame Street" script. "I had to learn how to write comedy from square one," says Ward. "I had to get to know these characters." She would eventually find her way into the writing rotation and has since penned some 150 episodes. In 2008, she briefly became the show's head writer, although she ultimately stepped down due to family obligations.

Usually, Ward writes in the basement of her home in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where she lives with her husband, the CFO of an importing company, and their two teenagers (and where a photo of 123 Sesame Street provides inspiration). But even before she sits down at the computer, a great deal of effort has gone into crafting each show. "Everything you write has to have an educational goal," says Ward, who has also written episodes of PBS's "Between the Lions" and Nickelodeon's "The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss," as well as serving as co-creator of "The Upside Down Show," which aired on Noggin. The Sesame Workshop research department (all bearing advanced degrees in education or child psychology) gives the writers an extensive curriculum outlining the general educational aims—be it basic life skills, social skills, or the scope of human emotions—for each episode. In addition, each season the writers are guided by a specific focus, jumpstarted by an annual seminar comprising experts from all over the country. For example, the most recent science initiative—"My World Is Green and Growing"—promoted environmental awareness.

When writers are assigned shows, they are given a letter and number of the day, as well as a list of actors and puppeteers who will be available for filming. "Nobody ever says, 'Go write a show about this or that,' " says Ward, "although we sometimes do a continuing storyline." For instance, four years ago, the producers and writers decided to have street resident Gina adopt a Guatemalan baby as a single mother. Ward volunteered to write an episode in the story arc, including songs performed by Mup-pets ("There's a Baby Coming") and Gina ("I'm Your Mommy Now"). "The hardest thing is coming up with an idea for a show out of nowhere," Ward says. "So sometimes a continuing story is helpful because it gives you more of a framework."

The primary writing task is a twelve- to fifteen-minute street story, a narrative that is presented in a nearly uninterrupted block, which makes room for shows-within-the-show, such as "Elmo's World." (In the first few decades of the program, the narrative was peppered with inserts, a quick-cut pace patterned after "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In." Sesame Workshop has since overhauled the format, partly in response to a vastly altered media landscape due to the growth of home video and the boom in children's programming.) Every "Sesame Street" script must be approved by the producers, the research department, and the head writer, who occasionally will request a rewrite. For example, last year Ward wrote a show featuring sibling rivalry between Oscar and his sister over who was grouchier. Producers and researchers were uncomfortable with the way the characters' mother seemed to pit them against each other. So Ward revised the dialogue; Mother Grouch simply told them they were equally rotten.

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