Eight-year-old Amiina Brown, who belongs to a New Britain based Girl Scouts of the USA Troop, works on her puppet, Monster Monster, before the show. Lucy Gellman Photos.
The Fraggles were well on their way to restoring the Celebration Stone, one bouncing, big-footed step at a time. Already, they had embarked on a journey to find the rock’s four fragments, which shimmered and sang in the light. They had braved a cave filled with gumball-colored rollies, passing them mellifluously between their hands.
Now, a cloud of bubbles burst from the front of the stage, shining and prismatic. Somewhere in the orchestra seats, first grader Abby Colangelo watched a quintet of clear beach balls make their way into the audience, dozens of expectant fingers keeping them in flight. She knew then that she and her own puppet pal, Peter, would have some great stories to tell about the afternoon.
Fantasy, storytelling, and a disco-kissed musical odyssey came to College Street Sunday afternoon, as Fraggles, Doozers, Gorgs and Silly Creatures—hundreds of them, in fact—gathered at the Shubert Theatre for a live performance of Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock: Back To The Rock. Inspired by the 1983 t.v. series and 2022 reboot of the same name, the performance packed the house, in a testament to the power of meeting young audiences exactly where they are.
“It is no secret that theater as a whole must invest in the future of our patrons and artists,” said Shubert Artistic Director Anthony McDonald, whose own young daughter was in the audience Sunday. “Our hope is that all students at one time or another in New Haven, get an opportunity to experience theater right here at Shubert Theatre before they graduate.”
“If we can plant the seed early enough, one never knows how it may impact that child in the present or the future,” he continued. “But we do know if they never have an experience before they graduate, it's less likely they will desire one thereafter.”
Abby Colangelo (in blue) and her sister work on their puppets.
Sunday, that began in the theater’s new second-floor cabaret space, where craft tables and dozens of empty seats welcomed five different Girl Scouts of the USA troops before the show. As they slid into their chairs, the girls chatted and laughed, surveying a sea of googly eyes, fuzzy pipe cleaners and felted mitten shapes laid out across the room. After a surprise appearance from Cotterpin Doozer and a puppet master at her service, they got to work.
The Girl Scout Patch Program, now in its 11th year, was in full swing. At one table, 10-year-old Samantha Brennan eyed a shiny blue cotton ball with soft, hairy spikes and considered the shape for a moment. As a member of Troupe 41197—normally based in Rahway, New Jersey—she’s spent over two years making trips to see performances, including Aladdin and Wicked on Broadway. Each comes with its own unique patch, which turns into a piece of art on Samantha’s mint green vest.
So when her mom, Troupe Co-Leader Alana Rivera, spotted a tea party with Troupe 10700 in New Britain, she and Samantha decided to make a whole Connecticut weekend out of it. As 3 p.m. drew closer, she seemed almost as excited as Samantha for the performance.
Alana Rivera and her daughter, Samantha Brennan.
“I think it’s great to give them an outlet to express themselves and to expose them to theater,” Rivera said. She added that it was a trip down memory lane: she grew up with Fraggle Rock. Now, she gets to share it with her daughter.
A few seats away, New Britain-based Troop Leader Briggitte Brown and her daughter Amiina echoed that enthusiasm. Amiina, who is eight, has also made the trek to New York to see plays on Broadway (she and Samantha know each other through the Girl Scouts). So when she found something closer to home, she was thrilled—and ready for the experience.
Sunday, she showed off her newly-fashioned puppet, Monster Monster, as she collected a stick of rock candy and prepared for the show.
Across the room, Abby Colangelo put the finishing touches on her own puppet, a friendly faced creation that she named Peter. Like the Fraggles, Abby said, Peter has a rich backstory: he is approximately one billion years old, and eats 1,000 pounds of tacos per day.
“He makes me feel happy,” she said as she lifted him from the table, and fitted her onto her hand. She added that the two, fast friends, would be storytelling buddies by that evening.
As attendees slipped puppets and rock candy into their Shubert Theatre backpacks, Director of Education & Engagement Kelly Wuzzardo said she’s grateful for the longevity of the program, which started in 2014. Eleven years ago, Wuzzardo suggested the idea after spotting a few shows on Broadway that did the same thing. Frances “Bitsie” Clark, who was still on the theater’s board and had worked for the Girl Scouts of America, made a connection. The rest was history.
Sunday's show felt especially exciting: “I’m a Gen X Fraggle Rocker” who was herself a Brownie and Junior Scout, Wuzzardo said. As a kid, her uncle used to send letters à la Uncle "Traveling" Matt, a character in the original Fraggle Rock who makes an appearance in the reboot and live performance. Later this year, she plans to bring in older Girl Scouts for the Shubert’s run of Mean Girls.
It was a kind of teaser for the performance itself, an homage to Muppets progenitor Jim Henson that parents, grandparents, and caregivers across the audience seemed just as excited to relive as their young charges. As attendees poured into the theater, some cradled in arms and suspended in soft slings and baby carriers, a general sense of wonderment buzzed through the house.
Somewhere around row G, a trio of bright Fraggle plushies made an appearance for the first time. In a balcony box above, a tween appeared in long white gloves, a feather boa and sequined dress, missing only a pair of opera glasses. One box over, a young attendee looked out over the stage, ready to jam. Within minutes of the show starting, she was shredding, elementary-school style. She didn't stop dancing until the final curtain had closed.
It didn’t take long to see what the hype was about. On stage, a familiar, throbbing bass line emerged from the darkness, and a flurry of soft, syncopated Fraggle feet moved to the sound. In the theater, attendees began to clap, some cheering between verses of the well-worn theme song. As they settled in, a steady subterranean drip-drip-drip replaced the music, with a projected, glowing blue backdrop in which five Fraggle friends were happily existing.
And then, much to the audience’s delight, the fourth wall fell. Boober, an older Fraggle with a newsboy cap and Charlie Brown-sized level of anxiety (or as the person behind this reporter whispered audibly, “the only reasonable children’s character out there”), noticed the audience for the first time. He ran to the lip of the stage, agog and wobbly. Even as an oversized muppet, he seemed to shudder.
The Fraggles! Photo courtesy of the Shubert Theatre.
“The-the-the-They! Them! There!” he exclaimed, with a kind of awe and panic that felt at once over-the-top and entirely relatable. Gobo, who appeared with orange skin and spiky purple hair, had it under control.
“Wait a minute!” Gobo cried. “I know who you are! You’re silly creatures!” In the audience, young members—and the young at heart—giggled back with delight.
Then the Fraggles were off, looping the audience in on a romp through the lives of Gorgs, Doozers, and at least one Cave of Forgetfulness. As bouncing, luminescent boulders, prescient butterflies, and anthropomorphic flowers (think Little Shop’s Audrey Jr., but prettier and without the cannibalism) entered the fray, puppet masters ran around the stage, dressed in black boiler suits and beaming as they jumped into the action.
It’s easy to see, perhaps, why it’s a template for live performance for young people. When Fraggle Rock premiered in the early 1980s, it blended the avant-garde, educational sensibilities of Sesame Street with the surrealism and dysregulation of an acid trip. It was (and is) surprisingly existential, teaching its young viewers about empathy, teamwork, trust-building and communication through music.
Abby and Peter.
Over 40 years later, it holds up, with a vivacious, talking trash heap named Marjorie, trailblazing female construction worker, and musical numbers that keep the show moving. As she sat in Row G, Rivera let herself ease into the storyline, in which the Fraggles must lean on each other to find and reclaim the magic of their ancient traditions.
“It was lively, vibrant,” she said in a phone call afterwards. “I loved the story behind it, the journey that they went on, them coming together.”
“It was a good show!” Samantha chimed in during the same call. For any potential young audience members, she added, “I would maybe tell them about the place that we went to and [tell them] that they should like, try it out.”
That’s exactly what the Shubert is hoping to do as it expands the kids of shows it brings to New Haven. Since beginning his tenure in March 2021, McDonald has folded in an increased and diverse number of children’s shows, from Fraggle Rock and Sesame Street earlier this season to 123 Andrés, Dr. Kaboom, Annie and the Hip-Hop Nutcracker. This spring, programs like Dot Dot Dot the Musical and Ada Twist, Scientist dovetail with educational efforts like the Girl Scout Patch Program, summer performing arts camp, classroom visits and partnership with the Stetson Branch Library.
Thanks largely to institutional partners like ASML and Jordan’s Furniture, McDonald added, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) students are able to attend select performances for free, and leave with a new book at the end of the show. In early May, for instance, hundreds of young people will come for a matinee of Ada Twist, and leave with a copy of Andrea Beaty’s hit kids’ book of the same name, on which the musical is based.
It’s not just anecdotal. In 2019, a report from the National Endowment for the Arts found that youth exposed to live theater—particularly over a sustained period of time—were more empathetic, socially and emotionally plugged in, and engaged in the world around them. Live theater can also be a professional window: kids who see theater have a better sense of the creative careers that may exist both on and beyond the stage, from puppetry to tech to arts administration.
“It’s a learning experience,” said Anthony Lupinacci, director of advertising and community relations at the Shubert. He remembered attending a seminar several years ago, during which a speaker made the pitch for engaging young audiences early and often. After all, he noted, the field can’t and won’t survive without them.
“If you don't introduce them [young people] to live theater by a certain age, they go into a live theater blackout,” Lupinacci remembered the speaker telling him. "But once you make a young person feel comfortable going into a theater, you pretty much have them for life.”