By Donald H. Harrison
CHULA VISTA, California – “Growing, learning, sharing kindness, and acceptance of others” are the watchwords of Sesame Place. The Sesame Street theme park’s employees say they practice these values whether in day-to-day activities or at special events like last December’s Chanukah celebration that featured playing dreidel with Elmo.
Courtney Adams, an entertainment coordinator who had her bat mitzvah at Temple Beth Torah in Ventura, County, joined the staff of Sesame Place just prior to its opening in 2022 after a career in the hospitality and restaurant industries. An amateur entertainer and stand-up comic, she started as one of Sesame Place’s well-known costumed characters: Oscar the Grouch.
Adams and her supervisor, entertainment manager Allyson Sevedge, both began their Sesame Street tenures as costumed characters and then worked their way up into leadership positions. Sevedge has been with Sesame Street franchises for 15 years and has played such characters as Elmo, Abby, Zoe, Rosita, Grover, Prairie Dawn and Oscar.
“It is really neat when you get out there in costume and see when the children’s faces light up,” Adams commented. “They run up and hug you. It feels really good. You wouldn’t do this job if you didn’t like that feeling of interacting.”
The first time that she appeared in a parade, when she heard the children shouting her character’s name, “I got a little verklempt if you will – I was overwhelmed but in the best way ever.”
My wife Nancy and I accompanied Nancy’s niece Heather Rothstain, her husband Ron Rothstain, and their 20-month-old son Asher to the theme park. “Ron purchased an Elmo doll for him about six months back and, at first, he didn’t like it, but now he is more interested in Elmo because we started watching Elmo’s World on YouTube,” Heather related. “I’ve also read him a couple of Sesame Street books at bedtime and recently bought him Cookie Monster PJs.”
Asher was primed for the occasion, in other words.
The youngster smiled broadly when the Elmo walk-around character came close, but shied away from Cookie Monster. Sevedge said if a child is scared – after all, Cookie Monster at Sesame Place is a lot bigger than Cookie Monster on television – the performers can cover their eyes and look away (in a gesture of shyness) and put out their soft, furry hands to be touched, Adams said.
On the other hand, if children are enthusiastic, the performers are instructed not to pick them up, but are encouraged to accept and give hugs. The roles require “a lot of pantomime, like drawing a heart, or putting your hands up to your heart, or blowing kisses,” Adams related.
The costumed characters don’t talk. They travel in the company of an ambassador who can answer questions and facilitate interactions. These escorts have to learn the characters very well, Sevedge said, because “the kids know the characters—they watch them every day—so if you don’t know them as well as the kids, they are going to know.” The performers in costume don’t speak – their voices would not sound like those of the characters seen on Sesame Street – so if children ask why they are so silent, they’re told the characters are saving their voices for the shows.
The shows, which are lively and fun to watch, are pre-recorded, with the characters lip-synching the songs, while energetically performing dances and comic routines.
New routines and games are planned for some religious holidays like Chanukah, and some silly holidays like Rubber Ducky Day and National Cookie Day, in which the characters of Ernie and Cookie Monster respectively are the stars.
Orthodox Rabbi Daniel Reich of Congregation Adat Yeshurun in La Jolla consulted on the Chanukah programming and also made certain that the food served in connection with that event was kosher.
“Dreidel with Elmo” proved to be a challenge for Elmo, because his big, furry fingers could not grasp the stem of the dreidel correctly, so it was difficult for him to spin it. Instead, joining circles of eight players, he tossed the dreidel onto a table, dice-like, Adams said.
Another activity was a Chanukah scavenger hunt for which cut-outs of familiar Chanukah objects – a dreidel, gelt, a chanukiah, and sufganiyot (donuts) – were placed around the park, and children marked on a map of Sesame Place where they found those objects. The prize was a sticker with a picture of Elmo and Baby Bear, Sesame Street’s Jewish character.
For more than 40 years, Sesame Street has operated another park in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. Sesame Place in Chula Vista learns from its sister organization. In Pennsylvania, for example, there is not only a Chanukah celebration, but another one for Passover. Sevedge said she hopes that celebration can be duplicated here in San Diego County in the future.
I asked Adams and Sevedge what their favorite experiences have been.
Adams said she served one day as the companion for Julia, a Sesame Street character with autism.
“This was actually a couple of weeks ago,” she responded. “We had an opportunity with a special-needs family. The girl had cerebral palsy and could speak through an iPad. We set up a meet-and-greet with Julia. We are a certified autism center and we cater to those with special needs, so it was really neat to have a 1:1 meeting with her. She was asking Julia all kinds of questions. She was so excited to come to the park to meet Julia.” She asked her fan questions like “What is your brother’s name?’”; “What is your favorite color” and “she asked about Fluster, who is Julia’s pet rabbit whom she carries around with her for comfort. It was so interesting to see how she interacted with an iPad. She is very bright and smart.”
Sevedge said an experience that she never will forget came a few years ago when she was playing Elmo. “A kid, about 4 years old, came in carrying a bag of pacifiers.” He and some of his friends “were ready to stop using them, and 
the way they were choosing to make that step for themselves was to give them to Elmo. So, this little kid came up and gave me a bag of pacifiers and said, ‘Here you go, Elmo, these are for you.’ His mom explained that he had stopped using them, but he didn’t want to throw them away. You realize how very important Elmo is to a lot of children.”
Before we left Sesame Place, Heather ducked in and out of a souvenir store and proudly displayed a “trophy,” an “Asher Street” sign with the Sesame Street logo. Asher can’t read yet, but, with a little help from mom, he held it up to see for anyone who can.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via sdheritage@cox.net