Winnie The Pooh And Sesame Street Give Theater Recovery A Boost

Anybody else need a hug? Well, if you were a child at any point in the last 90 years, and you are even vaguely interested in musical theater, there’s good news coming your way.

Over the next few months, several beloved entertainment properties are coming to life onstage, courtesy of the folks at Rockefeller Productions. The company, which found pre-pandemic success mounting stage adaptations of classics like Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, is forging ahead with new musicals based on Winnie the Pooh and Sesame Street.

“We’ve been very lucky to work with the wonderful properties that we have,” says 38-year-old founder Jonathan Rockefeller. “Winnie the Pooh? Everyone’s grown up with him. He evokes so many joyful feelings.”

Like most of Rockefeller’s shows, Winnie the Pooh features handmade puppets to bring its Hundred Acre Wood to life. The musical blends A. A. Milne’s classic characters with songs by the Sherman Brothers, who wrote the scores for Disney’s Pooh films, telling an original story with familiar brushstrokes. (It is produced in association with Disney). It opened this week to warm-and-fuzzy reviews in New York, and will set out on a national tour of the US in September.

Also in September, Sesame Street will open in New York, marking the first time the Muppet crew will take the stage in musical form. Exact content is still under wraps, but it will feature characters and songs from the long-running television show, with Rockefeller’s typical attention to detail.

“There’s a lot of content to go through,” he says of a six-year development, in partnership with Sesame Workshop. “But it’s wonderful. We’re making sure the experience is something above and beyond watching the television show.”

In addition to Pooh and Sesame, Rockefeller already has a dozen properties either in the pipeline or touring four continents, including two based on Paddington Bear and a puppet parody of 90’s sitcom FRIENDS. Much of it is family entertainment, in the “all ages welcome” sense. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is made for kids as young as two, while Pooh has been attracting fans almost as old as the bear himself, who first appeared in print in 1926.

“We’ve had people in their seventies come to us for their date night,” Rockefeller explains. “And I was there for a marriage proposal just yesterday – our second one at Pooh so far. I really think it’s about people wanting to rediscover joy. So many people have loved him over the years.”

The focus on joy – a word that wears roughly seven hundred hats in 2022 – guides Rockefeller, and in talking with him, one gets the refreshing sense that he means it. Cynicism is easy to come by, and the success of his company is so impressive one might be primed to expect it…if he weren’t so dang nice.

His focus on the audience itself is emblematic of his ethos, which is rooted in meeting them where they are instead of imposing an experience. Instead of pretending business is proceeding as usual, Rockefeller engages – gently, directly – with the fallout of the last two years.

“You’re dealing with the anxiety of kids who haven’t socialized,” he says. “You’re dealing with anxiety of the parents. To put a show on in a 200-seat theater is just as much work, if not more, to put it into a larger theater, because of that.”

His shows, at least in New York, still require masks for audiences, and still check vaccination cards for those eligible. Those geared to younger viewers feature lights at half level, low sound volume, and kids are allowed to leave and re-enter as they please – with a book in the lobby that tells them everything that’s happening on stage. This applies to those on the autism spectrum as well, placing Rockefeller among a burgeoning group of producers catering to buyers with different developmental needs.

These methods have borne success. Even accounting for the pandemic gaps, Rockefeller’s shows have overwhelmingly recouped their capitalizations, collectively grossing over $15 million since the first Caterpillar opened in 2014. And that success should provide clues, or at least suggestions, for others in the industry as they attempt to woo buyers back. Especially those with children.

“For everyone concerned that their kids don’t have an attention span anymore, it’s probably a lot cheaper to come to our show than go to a therapist,” he laughs. “And the parents are more behaved, too. Before, they always struggled to keep phones in their bags. Now they’re willing to put it away and have this bonding time with their children. That is something good that’s come out of [the pandemic], this appreciation. Wanting to feel a moment, instead of documenting it.”

Live entertainment writ large still has an uphill climb, especially brand-new ventures, which must launch without the federal aid extended to older shows, but face the same headwinds of new subvariants and depressed tourism. Broadway in particular is struggling to right-size itself, as a surprising number of shows announced closures last week, and the Broadway League dropped its masking requirement even as marquee stars continue to fall ill.

Rockefeller, meanwhile, remains sanguine. And while he refuses to gloss over the pandemic’s impact, he is bullish about the sector’s long-term prospects.

“A lot of theaters are still struggling. But we get access to canary figures” – as in the proverbial coal mine – “and the canaries are the young folks coming to the theater. Because if they go, the ecosystem slowly is going to follow. What we see is our bookings for The Very Hungry Caterpillar increasing. It’s a cavalcade. We have more demand for that show next year than ever we’ve had before, so much that we had to build more puppets to accommodate. That tells me that things are hitting the floor again. There’s still a long way to go, but it’s a really good sign.”