Hi, I'm Stephanie D'Abruzzo, and I've puppeteered professionally on Broadway, and on "Sesame Street."
But this is the first time I've puppeteered professionally on my street, from my home.
"Static closeup, take one."
(truck engine noise)
"Hold for truck, please."
"Truck. Hold for truck.
So I've been lucky enough to be a Muppet performer on "Sesame Street" since 1993.
And since 2015, I have been taking over the role of Prairie Dawn from the great Fran Brill.
And I also play Mae, who is Elmo's mom.
And both of those puppets were sent to my home so that I could participate in the "Elmo's Playdate Special."
Sesame Workshop reached out to all fourteen of the regular "Sesame Street" puppeteers
about a week after it was going to become obvious that we were not going to be able to go back into the studio any time soon.
and asked us if we would he willing to shoot content from our homes.
And so "Sesame Street" had all of the puppets that they felt they would need delivered to the puppeteers' homes.
"Music please!"
(music, singing)
"Bright smiles and hand waves. Shining out like the sun's rays."
So when we normally shoot a show like "Helpsters" or "Sesame Street," we are in a full studio setting, with three cameras.
You have a Floor Manager, you have a set of Puppet Wranglers, you have multiple puppeteers.
You have someone assisting you. Maybe doing your right hand. Maybe doing your feet.
You have people playing back audio. You have people monitoring your audio. You have people micing you.
You have a Director. You have free snacks.
"And action!"
Our setup now, is a lot different.
Fortunatly, I have my husband, Craig Shemin, who is my crew.
"Well, good news. I thought of two new things you can do instead of high fives and hand shakes."
We have a full, as you can see, greenscreen setup.
We have one double panel of lights with diffusion. We have two LED lights with softboxes on them.
I have an external monitor that we work with. I have a Senheiser wireless lavelier mic.
So Craig, also, he's monitoring my audio. he's calibrating the focus, he set up the whole situation.
About a year ago, we dedicated part of a walk-in closet to making a full audio booth, fully lined with foam tiles.
That's where I do all of the prerecords for the songs for the Sesame Street "Elmo's Playdate" and for the "Helpsters Help You" shorts.
You really are just seeing a really wide spectrum of what people are capable of doing
depending on their home setup, their needs, what's been shipped to them.
And if you watch the "Elmo's Playdate Special," you'll get a really intertesting sense of what everybody had.
What the other performers were doing was incredible.
Ryan Dillon, who plays Elmo, was able to set up a blue screen in his home.
But David Rudman, who plays Cookie Monster, was shooting in his actual kitchen.
And then you have people like Carmen Osbahr, who plays Rosita, she set up her acutal bedroom and dressed it to look like Rosita's bedroom.
And Leslie Carrara-Rudolph, who plays Abby, was abe to put some of her great art behind her.
You'll hear sirens outside, and that pulls you back into the reality of the world.
It's not ideal. None of us want to do this forever. We only want to do this until it's safe.
And of course, nobody wants to stop creating content.
I mean, now more than ever, you have kids who are either, fatigued from home schooling,
have parents who can't support the home schooling, either because they can't be at home because they have essential jobs,
or just because they've had it.
So this remote programming, it becomes even more important to them.
There are definately pros and cons to working at home.
It is really great to roll out of bed and roll in front of the camera.
This is the fist time I've put on makeup in weeks.
You don't get free snacks.
I miss the crew. I miss my friends. I miss my fellow puppeteers. I miss going to the set and giving everyone a hug.
And seeing how they're doing and how their families are doing.
I'm very lucky I get to work with my best friend and my dearest love, my husband, Craig Shemin.
But it's very isolating.
The other thing about not working with other puppeteers is just, not working with them.
Not being able to bounce ideas off of each other. Not being able to laugh with them.
All of the puppeteers on Sesame Street have worked together for a really long time.
So we have rythms and ways of working for years, and in some cases decades that you just don't get when you're in your living room.
There are things that you don't realize are different until you realize they're different. And that's the way working from home is.
You can get used to doing something in the moment where you're working into a character, and then you're like, wait.
This isn't normal. This isn't what I'm doing.
"And I just wanted to tell everyone watching to help-a-ha-ha...huh-huh-huh-huh."
There are definate things that are more fun about working from home.
I think we wish we didn't have to.