Sesame Street, Palestine: The Ups and Downs of Producing a Children’s Program
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Big Birds are rare in Palestine.
After a surprise phone call from Children’s Television Workshop, Daoud Kuttab took the chance of a lifetime to create a Palestinian coproduction of Sesame Street. But the challenges of producing a world-famous children’s program quickly escalated beyond just teaching Elmo to speak Arabic.
From finding actors and puppeteers in a country starved of training to dealing with a community that considered the production too provocative, the early days were less than easy. Animating hand puppets against a backdrop of the turbulent Palestinian-Israeli peace process drew him into exciting, tense times that made Cookie Monster’s search for sweets seem like child’s play. Days after the first episode aired, Daoud was arrested.
Journey into Kuttab’s unusual world, where the signing of the Oslo Accords, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Hollywood star Richard Gere, and the King of Jordan played important roles. Not even Kermit could have imagined this unique, exciting, and undeniably fascinating expansion of America’s most enduring children’s show into a new world bound by the West Bank desert, politics, media, and money.
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Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian award-winning journalist and television producer from Jerusalem, co-produced Palestinian Diaries. He is a former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University, columnist for Al-Monitor, and reporter for Arab News. He established the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University and was the first Palestinian to interview an Israeli Prime Minister for the leading Al Quds daily in June 1993. He writes regularly in major publications, such as the Washington Post, New York Times, and Jordan Times, and often contributes to Project Syndicate. He established the Arab world’s first internet radio, AmmanNet, and is the founder and director of Community Media Network in Amman. As a leading activist for press freedom in the Arab world, he was the first Arab to be elected to the Vienna-based International Press Institute, where he holds the portfolio of press freedom.
Nat Segaloff is a writer, producer, journalist, and Hugo and Locus Award-nominated author of more than two dozen books about filmmakers and film history, including Hurricane Billy: The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin. He covered the film industry for the Boston Herald and worked on A&E's flagship Biography series as well as programming for The Learning Channel, New World, Disney, Turner Classic Movies, and USA Network. As one of the original publicists on The Exorcist, he closes a haunting chapter in his life with The Exorcist Legacy. Segaloff lives in Los Angeles and can be found online at natsegaloff.com.
