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It took me 12 years to pluck up courage and finally write directly to the person who designed the Muppet characters for the Russian “Sesame”, as well as many more international versions of the show. But it turned out to be worth it. The wonderful Ed Christie reveals some facts about Zeliboba - unknown to even longtime “Sesame” fans like me! - this time.
Julia K., yours truly: Hello Mr. Christie! First off, I’d love to thank you (and Ms. Moyes, post mortem) for bringing Kubik, Businka and especially Zeliboba to life. To be brief: I love this Dvorovoi, and now am going around social media thanking everyone who worked on him. I was lucky enough to interview Zeli’s senior performer Stanislav Klimushkin back in 2018 and would like to ask you a couple questions on how Zeli’s overall look and character were created.
Ed Christie: Hello Julia! I would be happy to speak to you about Zeli.
JK: First thing first: character concept! It’s an honor (not even “kinda”, a real honor) that, out of all international versions, only our “Sesame” got a spirit as a main character. Was the idea about it yours, or offered by Vladimir Grammatikov’s team?
EC: I would like to take credit for Zeli being a spirit. Specifically a Spirit of the Forest. But I don’t think the Russian production team will agree. They may insist that it was their idea.
I remember in our discussions that the Russian team wanted something very different than what we had provided other international productions. So the Dvorovoi was the way to go because it is such an abstract concept. It was really fun to make variations of a spirit because no one would be able to say, “Oh… that’s not what a spirit looks like…”. It was very open-ended, conceptually.
( Read more... )Personal photos of the Zeli doll by: Julia K., “Azure-Mischief”
Zeliboba doll made by: Maria Kerch
