Megan Piphus Peace Becomes ‘Sesame Street’s First Black Puppeteer

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Megan Piphus Peace / puppeteer for Sesame Street

*Megan Piphus Peace made history as the first black American puppeteer for “sesame street.”

Peace was reportedly hired in September 2021 to play 6-year-old Black Muppet Gabrielle. According to Yahoo, Peace was 10 years old when she developed a love for the art of ventriloquism. She honed her skills with training gear, including a doll from a famous artist Edgar Bergen.

Peace was in elementary school when she started performing. At 15, she appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey” show. As a student at Vanderbilt Universityshe was known as “Vanderbilt Ventriloquist”.

“What I see as the magic of ventriloquism is sharing that experience with someone else and making them believe our conversations are real,” Peace shared with Thanks to them, we can. “I realized the impact that writing could have on the audience, and that every age could learn something from the show. From then on, my goal was to have a theme… woven into every performance .

READ MORE: Did Big Bird ignore Black Boy at Sesame Street theme park like his parents claim?

In March 2020, Matt Vogelsesame street‘s “puppet captain,” reached out to Megan to gauge her interest in learning more about “muppet style puppets.” She agreed, according to Yahoo’s report. To At the time, “Sesame Street” was working on a racial justice workshop called “The power of uswhich featured the character of Gabrielle.

“The sets of sesame street are like stepping into a fantasy. To be there is really something,” Peace told MyVU News from Vanderbilt University.

She also spoke about the meticulous hiring process to become a “Sesame Street” puppeteer.

“It takes time to go through the video submissions, but once we do, we nominate the people we’d like to invite to a workshop where we see their skills as a puppeteer and actor in person,” said Vogel, who plays the role of Big Bird. and Kermit the Frog, according to the Yahoo report. “Zoom isn’t an ideal way to run a workshop, but we made the most of it, and Megan was ready to learn.”

Watch Peace discuss his journey and passion via the YouTube clip above.

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