In this engaging memoir, Natasha Lance Rogoff recounts the experience of bringing Sesame Street to Yeltsin’s Russia. A Russo-phile who changed her name from Susan to Natasha as a teenager, Lance Rogoff had been working in Moscow for more than a decade as a reporter and documentary filmmaker when she was approached to be the executive producer of Ulitsa Sezam in 1993. ‘No one can say no to Elmo,’ a Sesame/Children’s Television Workshop executive insisted.
Launched in 1969 to bridge the socio-economic gap in education among American pre-schoolers, by the early 1990s Sesame Street had created nearly two dozen foreign co-productions, with programming adapted for cultural differences. In the wake of the Cold War, Senator Joe Biden spearheaded congressional support for bringing Sesame Street to Russia, in hopes that the Muppets would act as ambassadors for democracy and free markets.
Despite the show’s success in countries such as India, Mexico and South Africa, Russia presented unique problems.
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