ELMO: [LAUGHING]
ELMO AND FRIENDS: [SINGING]
Doobee, doo, doo.
Imagine a story.
Squiddily, a-cha.
Imagine a song.
Woo, dilly, woo.
We'll make it up.
Boom, shakka, lakka.
As we go along.
Bayoo, doolee, doo.
What happens next?
ALL: Wah, wah.
ELMO: You'll never know!
ALL: Wah da da da!
ELMO: It's "Elmo, the Musical." "Elmo, the Musical"!
VELVET: [SINGING]
Let's get on with the show!
ELMO: Ready, Velvet?
VELVET: Ready, Elmo!
CAROL-LYNN PARENTE: Well, "Elmo, the Musical" takes the
best things we love about Elmo-- singing and dancing--
and combines them in a wonderful 11-minute format,
throw in a little dose of math.
And it's your perfect preschool segment.
ALL: [SINGING]
Gua, gua, guacamole!
Guacamole, yeah!
KEVIN CLASH: "Elmo, the Musical" to me is actually a
child's first look into musicals or musical theatre,
which I think is really exciting.
ALL: [SINGING]
Heave, ho!
KEVIN CLASH: Because of our age group that watches Sesame,
it really will be their first introduction.
I'm excited about that.
JOSEPH MAZZARINO: The big thing was what does Elmo do
that nobody else does?
And what's he great at?
Kevin's an amazing singer.
And Elmo's a great singer.
ELMO: [SINGING]
It doesn't matter if you win or lose.
It's how you play that game.
Come on.
JOSEPH MAZZARINO: The musical idea had been
different every day.
Elmo looks great in different costumes.
And he's also, when you those full-body dance things,
there's something very magical about it.
What can we do with all that?
And a musical seemed like the greatest thing ever for that.
ELMO AND FRIENDS: [SINGING]
It's how you play the game.
MUPPETS: We just got to listen.
DR. ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: The curriculum goal for "Elmo, the
Musical" is math and imagination.
ELMO: Oh, quick.
Let's count the sides.
1, 2, 3--
DR. ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: We're using the arts, a musical, as
a tool to teach children about math skills.
MUPPET: Shape, ahoy!
DR. ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: And along the way, he's going to
be running into various problems.
And to solve the problem, he needs to use his math skills.
And this is a nice extension of our STEM curriculum focus.
We've been focusing on science, technology,
engineering, and math.
ELMO: Pizza slices, look!
They're shaped like triangles.
DR. ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: He's going to need to know his
geometric shapes, really know what a triangle is.
ELMO: Oh, yay!
We did it.
We're free!
[LAUGHS]
VELVET: That was brilliant, Elmo!
DR. ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: And he's going to be learning a
lot about addition and subtraction.
So you have to tune in to watch
this wonderful adventure.
CAROL-LYNN PARENTE: Once we decided to go with "Elmo, the
Musical," each script that flowed in was
better than the next.
JOSEPH MAZZARINO: It's so wide open.
I mean, it's like he can be anything.
ELMO: What if, what if, what if?
[LAUGHING]
JOSEPH MAZZARINO: The pilot was sea captain.
We were thinking, oh, well, he's a sea captain.
We started going down a pirate story.
And then it became a search for a whale.
We realized it shouldn't just be occupations.
He could be, literally, anything.
ELMO: Because Elmo is a monster with a dream.
[LAUGHS]
MAGICIAN: Oh, impressive.
ELMO: Thank you.
CAROL-LYNN PARENTE: We wanted to convey imagination so that
every musical in this series, Elmo was imagining the
subject, imagining the costumes and the props.
And we wanted to teach kids how to imagine for themselves.
ELMO: Come on, let's do the "Guacamole."
ELMO AND FRIENDS: [SINGING]
Gua, gua, gua, Guacamole.
Shake it around fast, and shake them slowly.
Come on, everybody, do the Guacamole.
BILL SHERMAN: Working on "Elmo, the Musical" was a
particular awesome kneading of the things
I've done in the past.
I started work on The Electric Company, and then I graduated
and moved on to Sesame Street, and in the meantime, had
orchestrated and arranged this show on Broadway
called In the Heights.
CAROL-LYNN PARENTE: We are so fortunate to have Bill Sherman
as our music director.
And he's really shining in this new format.
BILL SHERMAN: "Elmo, the Musical" was a chance to
really put all of the world that I've worked in in the
past together into one thing, which is really interesting.
And to use some of my incredible theater-composer
colleagues come in and lend their talents to this thing.
AUDRA MCDONALD: [SINGING]
Keep on clucking, clucking, [CLUCKS]
[SINGING]
Keep on clucking, clucking.
[CLUCKS]
BILL SHERMAN: We've had Jason Robert Brown, who's a very big
deal composer; and Tony winners; and Tom Kitt, who won
a Tony for Next to Normal; and Lin Miranda from In the
Heights; a bunch of big theater composers lending
their talents to the musical section of "Elmo, the
Musical."
ELMO AND WHALE: [SINGING]
Dancing with a whale.
Look, how our Moby is back!
DR. ROSEMARIE TRUGLIO: Music is a wonderful learning tool
because it's so much a part of children's lives.
They enjoy music.
And more importantly, for me as an educator, it's a
wonderful tool to teach math concepts because music and
math go hand in hand.
ELMO AND VELVET: [SINGING]
10, 9.
8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Blast off!
[LAUGHS]
VELVET: Bon voyage, Elmo!
CAROL-LYNN PARENTE: We have a very special creative
relationship with our animation
company, Magnetic Dreams.
They've worked with us on a few projects before.
They really understand what Sesame Street is about.
It's really critical to sell the imagination curriculum.
And I think they've done an amazing job.
ELMO: [SINGING]
Golden shoes, look at them glow.
RICKEY BOYD: It really starts as far back as early meetings
with the directors.
We start with a meeting with each director about their
episode, talking about what the backgrounds are going to
look like, doing storyboards to plan everything in advance,
and then designing the sets before the thing's ever shot
just so we know in a virtual world where everything is
going to live.
KEVIN CLASH: We're utilizing a lot more computer-generated
backgrounds and things in this.
And so there's a lot more of using your brain, looking at
things that's not really there.
RICKEY BOYD: We take the footage, once its edited, back
to the office in Nashville and begin to lay in the actual 3D
backgrounds, animate.
In some cases, there's a few special episodes that have 3D
characters that we'll add in it.
So a very long drawn-out process.
It's like watching paint dry.
But it's great when it's all finished.
CHEERLEADERS: [SINGING]
Jump, jump, jump super long.
Jump from Pittsburgh to Hong Kong.
Get ready, warm up with those shoes.
Jumping is fun and healthy, too.
Yeah.
Athletes!
CAROL-LYNN PARENTE: Well, "Elmo's World" has been on the
air for about 14, maybe 15 years now.
We were ready for something new for Elmo.
Well, we did take the things we like best about "Elmo's
World," which is Elmo singing and dancing, throw in some
curriculum.
And it is the perfect brand-new segment.
VELVET: Curtain call!
ELMO: Oh, good.
ELMO: [SINGING]
That's "Elmo, the Musical."
ELMO'S FRIENDS: [SINGING]
"Elmo, the Musical."
VELVET: [SINGING]
That's the end of our--
ALL: [SINGING]
--show!
ELMO: Buh-bye!
[APPLAUSE]
ELMO: [SINGING]
Come on, dance along.
Yip, yip, oovy, oovy.
YIP YIPS: Uh-huh.
ELMO: Got your fiss, fiss, dance is groovy.
YIP YIP 1: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
ELMO: Yip, yip, yip, any place.
YIP YIPS: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
ELMO: Yip on the Earth, yip in space.
ELMO AND FRIENDS: [SINGING]
Shake them around fast and shake them slowly.
Come on, everybody, do the Guacamole.
ALL: Gua, gua, gua, Guacamole.
Guacamole, yeah.
ELMO: Move your legs fast, then move them slowly.
Come on, everybody, do the Guacamole.
ELMO: Whee!
[SINGING]
Eight little barnacles on the whale again, why you're
sticking, sticking there?
Get up and play.
BARNACLES:: [SINGING]
Yeah, we need some action.
ELMO: [SINGING]
Why not try subtraction?