This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] John Tartaglia: Hey, I'm John Tartaglia, and I'm Global Fraggle, and welcome to The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales.

[0:12] Alan Seales: Welcome to an all-new episode of The Theatre Podcast. I'm Alan Seales. Our guest for this episode is John Tartaglia, who has a very cool origin story, and his entire career essentially started at the age of 16 when he was hired part-time to be a puppeteer on Sesame Street. This all came out of a long and fortuitous story of him becoming obsessed with puppetry at a young age, writing to Jim Henson, having Jim read John's letter, and actually never forgetting him. And all of this gets wrapped up in this amazing set of circumstances that leads through his Tony-nominated performance in the original cast of Avenue Q, and then finds its way all the way back to Fraggle Rock, the reboot, the show that John was actually obsessed with as a kid that got him into puppetry in the first place.

Oh, man, this was just meant to be. So, tune in, sit down, have fun, grab your favorite puppet, and listen to this episode. Find me online, leave rating and review, do all the things on the socials. And now, everybody, please enjoy this episode with John Tartaglia. Here you go. One, two, three.

[1:22] Alan Seales: Today's guest has a resume so long that if I went through all of it right now, this podcast would be about three hours of me talking. But, shamelessly borrowed from his bio on his own website for the most part, our guest is an Emmy and Tony Award-nominated actor who began his professional career at age 16 as a puppeteer for Sesame Street. His Broadway debut in Avenue Q earned him a Tony nom for originating the dual roles of Princeton and Rod, and other Broadway credits include Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast and originating Pinocchio and the Magic Mirror in Shrek on Broadway. He has received eight Emmy Award nominations for Johnny and the Sprites on Disney Junior, a show that he created, executive produced, and just happened to star in.

He's also an executive producer, director, writer, and radio personality. He most recently wrapped filming season two of Fraggle Rock, the reboot, which just speaks to my heart and my soul. And this time, he is now also the creative supervisor for the whole damn series. John Tartaglia, welcome to the theatre podcast.

[2:27] John Tartaglia: Thank you. I'm exhausted now. I'm exhausted hearing that. I don't know. I should be 100 years old from that.

[2:34] Alan Seales: Well, you started professionally at 16. So let's go there and back up. So to be hired on Sesame Street professionally, meaning it's your job and you're paid for it, obviously that wasn't the first time you picked up a puppet. So where did the love for performing, acting, and especially puppetry, where did that even start?

[2:57] John Tartaglia: Well, performing and acting, I started literally as young as I can remember. I mean, my parents are both in show business, so I grew up in a theatrical family. I mean, the earliest memories I have of spending time with my family truly are either being in an audience watching my mom in a show and my dad musical director or backstage watching the same thing happen. And I actually credit that to my love for theater as a whole and falling into where I am now on the production side of things, because I think I was always as fascinated with what was happening on stage as I was backstage. So it kind of makes sense the craft part of my life, like why I got that kind of imbued in me at such a young age.

But puppetry literally started when I was seven and I discovered the original Fraggle Rock series. I remember watching it for the very first time and just being so entranced by it because it is very theatrical in its own way. And I remember seeing it and literally saying, that's what I want to do. It was this like really instinctual, like visceral moment of like, bam, that's it. Like I just I can't describe it, but I think it's a feeling we all get when we're sitting in the theater watching a musical and going, oh, I want to do that. It's whatever that bug is. That's that's that's as early as I remember getting it was from the original Fraggle Rock, which is now very ironic that here I am doing Fraggle Rock many years later.

[4:16] Alan Seales: OK, so watching Fraggle Rock as a seven-year-old, was it was in the acting or was it like literally, did you have to wear with all that age to realize those are real people creating this story with puppets? I mean, was there a disconnect or was it all sort of the same thing?

[4:32] John Tartaglia: I think it was this combination of, you know, getting lost in the world of it. I mean, you know, if you think about it, it's you know, it came out in 1983 when I discovered it. It was probably 1985 or six, I guess. And, you know, there weren't a lot of like world-based like world-building shows for kids, fantasy lore show for kids like that had these this, you know, multi-level world that was created. And I think that pulled me in originally. And then it was just the humor and the music and the movement and the effects and everything about it. You know, that's why I say it was so theatrical. It was like it combined everything that I think theater folks love, you know. And then, yeah, there was that day when it suddenly occurred to me.

I was like, wait a minute, like someone's doing that character. Someone's voicing that character. They're moving somehow. And that's kind of how puppetry became, you know, part of my life is I was like that. How are they doing that? I want to do that. That's really, really cool. And then that just I just became obsessive after that, you know, at seven and eight, nine, ten years old of absorbing every single Muppet Henson, Jim Henson puppetry thing I could I could find way before the days of YouTube, way before the days of the Internet. You know, it was just whatever I could find at the local blockbuster or happened to come upon, you know, on television or, you know, in a library.

[6:03] Alan Seales: So then you're growing up as a teenager, a young teenager, I guess, still doing puppetry. At what point? I had to make you popular.

[6:11] John Tartaglia: Yeah, that's very popular. Right. Super, super great experience in middle and high school.

[6:20] Alan Seales: Yeah. No, I mean, it was weird. It was like and it's funny because now we know I can look back and see it and be like, oh, I can see why, you know, kids were like, what's happening? Because, you know, to them, it was like, oh, you're playing with dolls. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm a puppeteer. Like, I would like try to get into the mechanics of puppetry and what it is. And you could see they were just like, yeah, OK. But no, it was just somehow I it was like this world that I saw in the distance. And I was like, there's this amazing group of performers, the Muppeteers, the Jim Henson's puppeteers that I'm going to be part of. And I had this very certain feeling that I was going to be part of it.

And it was almost like, I guess, you know, I always tell people, I think I kind of did the Oprah Winfrey manifestation thing before that was, you know, what's it called? The secret, I think is what it was called. Like you like I think I was doing that kind of, you know, you know, obliviously as a child. I had no idea, but I was doing it. I just was like, oh, it's going to happen. You know, this optimistic, like, oh, it's going to happen. I'm going to be 18, New York City, work for the Muppets. And then it happened. So I think that there's a there is some power to that.

[7:23] Alan Seales: So did you grow up in the New York area?

[7:26] John Tartaglia: I grew up. So I was born in New Jersey and I lived there with my mom, my mom, my father. They divorced when I was about six. And then my mom and I lived alone in New Jersey for a few years. And when I was 10, she remarried and we moved to Pennsylvania.

[7:40] Alan Seales: OK, so 10 Pennsylvania. And are Sesame Street still filmed in Astoria Coffman Studios today?

[7:47] John Tartaglia: It is. Yes.

[7:49] Alan Seales: Yeah. And locally here in our in our backyard here in New York City. So Fraggle Rock, too, is that filmed locally?

[7:57] John Tartaglia: Fraggle Rock is actually filmed. The original was filmed in Toronto and we film our version, Fraggle Rock back to the rock in Calgary, Canada.

[8:04] Alan Seales: Oh, I didn't realize it was Canadian.

[8:07] John Tartaglia: Yes.

[8:08] Alan Seales: So are you it's such a.

[8:09] John Tartaglia: Yeah. You know, I I'm so lucky because they I'm one of the few, you know, United States based people who gets to fly up and film the show. So we go up for about six months when we film it. And so Calgary literally feels like a second home because it's, you know, we'll spend about six months, seven months there when we shoot a season.

[8:31] Alan Seales: But six months, that's a lot to shoot a season of a show.

[8:35] John Tartaglia: It is. It is.

[8:37] Alan Seales: Is that I guess. OK, so, well, I'm trying to decide if I want to go into the. OK, screw it. Let's let's dive into Fraggle Rock because I've got I've got other side stuff I want to get back to.

[8:46] John Tartaglia: OK. We can talk about anything. Jump around.

[8:48] Alan Seales: Fraggle Rock. Again, one of those things where when I when I was a kid, too, I just loved I love all the songs and I loved the the way that everyone was just so optimistic and happy. And then you were always, you know, the big the people in full body costumes were the bad guys.

[9:05] John Tartaglia: Yeah. Yeah.

[9:06] Alan Seales: Right. And it also seems so black and white to me as a kid. It just was like you you want to be a Fraggle. You want to be good. And I love now the Broadway kind of crossover, too, along with like yourself. And then Lily Cooper is Doc, which is amazing. And then I saw.

[9:23] John Tartaglia: Incredible.

[9:24] Alan Seales: And then I even saw that Douglas Lyons is like a script editor, a story editor.

[9:27] John Tartaglia: He's a he's a one of our writers. Yep.

[9:29] Alan Seales: And then you have Amy Garcia, who, of course, you know, was into the woods, the national tour recently. And she did Les Mis on Broadway. And it was an Avenue Q with me. And she's plays Ma Gorg. She's she's incredible.

[9:41] John Tartaglia: And Ben DuRouche, who played Princeton Avenue Q off Broadway that I actually directed him in. He's he's one of our amazing puppeteers. And yeah, there's a there's a there's a our guest stars, right? Daveed Diggs and Ariana DeBose. And there's a there's a lot of Broadway crossover.

[10:00] Alan Seales: Do you do you do that? Are you responsible for that outreach as creative director or like because that Canadian company?

[10:07] John Tartaglia: Yeah. Yeah. With a Broadway with so much of a Broadway crossover seems unusual, but maybe not. You know, the greatest this is the I really believe that's the greatest gift in and being able to produce something or create something or or run something is you get to bring people you love together and you get to work with people you love. And there's so many people like Amy, like Ben, who, you know, over the years, we've done different projects together and been in the trenches together. And it's like when you finally get the opportunity to say, OK, what's your dream cast of people that, you know, will bring their a game and will give everything they got? You know, you get that opportunity to bring those people in.

And so, yeah, it was when we were putting this cast together, you know, Fraggle Rock, what made the original series so beloved and so successful was they truly had the best time making the show. And that comes through on screen. And I think it's going to be right. You know, when you go to see a musical and the cast is not getting along and things have not been happy, I really think you can feel it.

[11:06] John Tartaglia: Yeah. And so it was so important to put together a group of people for this production of Fraggle Rock that that really would be a family and would have a great time and everyone would collaborate. And and so that that's a part of it. And I really think theatrical people do that better than anybody else. You know, there's there's there's some folks, you know, in the film and television world who don't have that that theatrical experience and don't understand that level of collaboration that you just you can't get it anywhere else but the theater. So I think it's I like having theater people with me in a television experience. I enjoy that.

[11:40] Alan Seales: And I think maybe the theatrical people, too, could do a better job. Not better. That that came out wrong. A more authentic job of talking to a seemingly inanimate object.

[11:52] John Tartaglia: Right. Yeah. To some degree. I mean, Lily is Lily is incredible because, you know, I had seen her in Spring Awakening. I knew of her for many years. We'd never worked together. And when she auditioned for Doc, it was the height of Covid, right? The height of Covid. So we weren't auditioning in person. People were like still stuck in their bedrooms, you know, making tapes and making things. And so we didn't even meet. You know, normally when you when you audition someone for something like this, you would you would get in a room with Sprocket, the puppet, you know, the dog and and whoever's auditioning for Doc and see the interplay and see how they grab the dog and play with the dog and see all that.

And we couldn't do that. So Lily was all off of a tape. It was all kind of, you know, taking a guess on who would be best. And she first day, it was like she and Sprocket went way back for years. And she's so warm and she's so, you know, she loves what she does and loves the characters and loves the fraggle so much that it just again, it comes through. You can't fake that.

[12:50] Alan Seales: You said you have to go up there for six months, which is that because of your role and because I'm sure you're probably in every scene because you are a puppeteer controlling, puppeteering Sprocket and Gobo and all these other, some of the dozers and all these other, yeah, I mean, I guess, is it because you're doing script and creative and filming all of this stuff that you have to be there the entire time? Because I assume like Lily being based out of New York and having a family and a young child and whatnot, like she's not there for the whole six months.

[13:26] John Tartaglia: No, no. Yeah. I mean, basically, I wear so many hats on the show. So I, you know, I'm now since the second season wrapped, I've become the creative supervisor for the brand of Fraggle Rock. That means like everything from the TV show to the albums to the merchandise to everything. But when we're in production, I'm really overseeing it with my other executive producers. But I'm the puppet captain, which means that I'm in charge of all the puppeteers. And I play all those characters. And I'm kind of like the creative, I don't know, the creative mama of the show. That's a horrible way to put it, but you know what I mean? And so yeah, so I usually get there about two to three weeks before production starts.

I'm usually there about two, three weeks after production ends. But the reason it's six months is because, you know, and I give credit to Apple TV Plus for this when we first talked about bringing Fraggle Rock back. If you look at the original Fraggle Rock from 1983 to '87, and you look at, you know, the capabilities of television back then and everything, it was produced on the highest production level possible. And that's from everything from like the visuals to the music to the set design to the performance to everything, you know, 18 puppeteers on set, you know, it was a big, big show. And it was something that people we would talk about for years and people would say, Oh, you could never do Fraggle Rock again like that.

It's too expensive. It'll never happen. And to Apple TV Plus' credit, when they wanted to do it, they said, Yes, make Fraggle Rock, you know, the same level as it was originally made, but just make it even better. So it takes us, we're on three giant soundstages. So we film at the Calgary Film Center. I think it might have changed names since we left, but it's a massive soundstage. It's where they shot The Last of Us and many other shows. And we have three giant soundstages, we use all three of them, and we have 25 puppeteers. And it takes about six to seven days per half hour episode to film. And it's because we just want it to be the best it can be. And it's shot single camera style. So that also, you know, takes a little bit longer.

We were like, No, we have to make this as cinematic and epic as possible, because it has to be a Fraggle Rock for 2024. It has to be a Fraggle Rock for what kids are watching today. And kids are more sophisticated than they were in 1983, as far as what they expect from television, you know. So yeah, so it takes a while to shoot it. But it's like, I don't know, I can't describe it. It's like this amazing machine that everyone is pumping all together at the same time. And somehow we all know how to make it work. And it just comes together.

[15:54] Alan Seales: How does the preparation as a puppeteer, I've never done puppeteering really at all, and what got me interested in saying like, Oh, I thought that would be pretty cool was Avenue Q to say, A, it's like, it's a show for adults with puppets, which makes it very relatable for the ticket buying audience of the Broadway ecosystem. But I assume, I mean, I guess I don't assume, I don't know. As a puppeteer, you're rehearsing all of the movement of one hand or another or both, depending on what kind of puppets you've got. And then depending on if it's like a Trekkie monster, where you've got two people that you have to act as one, you've got to rehearse that. And then on top of that, you've got the lines and the intention and the actual acting part of it.

So I think, and I've watched some behind the scenes stuff, the puppeteers are looking sort of down or forward, like they've got their hands above them. And they're looking at monitors, right? So they can see what they're doing.

[16:55] John Tartaglia: That's right. So then there's, you have to come in with your lines. You have to know them cold, right? Like, that's got to be before you ever step foot in there.

[17:03] John Tartaglia: Well, you know, it's funny, because everyone's got a different process. But the majority of puppeteers, and this goes back to the Muppet Show days with Jim Henson and Frank Oz, you know, because in television, scripts get updated and changed so often, especially on a serialized show like this, where each episode leads to the next. So you're adapting stories as you go. If you're shooting out of order, you might have had to change something in episode 12, but now you're shooting episode nine, so you have to reflect back. So things get changed literally on the day and rewritten on the day. So we actually usually tape up our scripts next to our television monitors. And so what our eyes are doing, which is part of what you learn when you're learning puppetry, is it's not just, you know, the art of performing on camera, which is already its own difficult thing because the screen is flipped and it's backwards and your arm is in the air, but you're looking down on the TV monitor, like you said.

But you're also learning how to read your lines and go back and forth between the script and the shot and trust what's happening with your hand while you're reading it live. So it's a little bit of a – what's the word? Like you're juggling 20 balls at once, and you just have to kind of, you know, like a really good juggler, trust that they're going to land where they're supposed to. It's kind of the same thing. So yeah, we're – and oftentimes, like a sitcom, because our amazing writers come from the primetime sitcom world, they'll actually, you know, we'll do a take and then they'll come in and be like, what if we change it to this and move this line here? Let's, you know, they'll plus it, you know, in between takes.

So you kind of have to have your script up because sometimes the scene will just change and change and change. And I actually love that because to me, it's like, that's how you get the best takes and you get the best work.

[18:44] Alan Seales: Hang on, everybody. We're just going to take a quick break.

[18:48] John Tartaglia: All right, now we're back. There's two things I want to go back to. One is, how did you get the Sesame Street job not being legal at 18? You were 16 when you got this. So that's one part of this. But then the other is going, making your Broadway debut in Avenue Q. I want to ask about like how much acting you were doing before Avenue Q and then how different it was to be seen on stage with your puppet, if that was unnerving or weird. So you choose your own adventure. Which one do you want to answer first?

[19:18] John Tartaglia: Well, I guess to get to Sesame Street, no lyric pun intended. Once I decided at eight years old, I was like, I was very, very steadfast and sure that like, I was going to, this was my goal. My goal was like, move to New York City at 18, become a puppeteer because I'd read that other people had done that. So I was like, that's what I'm going to do. And, you know, this is the days again, before the internet, before texting, before Instagram, before everything where if you wanted to get in contact with somebody, you would either pick up a phone or write a letter. And I wrote a very, very earnest letter to Jim Henson at eight years old, basically saying exactly that I was going to move to New York City at 18 and work for him.

And my dream was to be a puppeteer. And I might have sent some photos that my mom took of me, sent it off. And about a year later, I got back this beautiful signed autograph photo from him and a really nice letter from his secretary basically saying that Jim would see my letter. And that, of course, you know, thrilled me. And then a few months after that, I was at school and I got called into the office and I think I'm in trouble. And they're like, and this is the days of like the new Mickey Mouse Club was coming back. If you remember, like the Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, like it was the beginning of that. It was me too. And they said this thing. Yeah, it was the coolest show ever. Right.

And I watched it obsessively. And they had this thing on the show called Guest Day, where they would basically like I think it was Fridays, they would have like a famous celebrity on and then they would have a real kid interviewed that person. And I'm in get called to my principal's office. And there's a woman on the phone. And she says, My name is Kate Link. And I'm calling from, you know, the Mickey Mouse Club. And Jim Henson is going to be a guest on guest day. And we're looking for kids to interview him. And he suggested you might be someone to talk to.

[21:05] John Tartaglia: Wow. Remember? Yeah. And I just remember, like my, my, I can still remember like where I was standing and what I like the feeling of like my stomach dropping out. Right. So it was like, you know, I had to write a letter and write like 20 questions I would ask him at a bio, which is hilarious when you're like eight or nine years old and ask for a bio. It's like what like, I like dogs and candy. And I get grumpy when I don't eat lunch. Exactly. Macaroni and cheese is my favorite. So I so my mom got lover sent sent it off overnight and started with like 30 something kids got narrowed down, narrowed down, narrowed down, finally got down to me and one other kid. And if I won, I would have flown to LA and spent a day on the set with Jim Henson would have been my little my dream come true.

Metal puppeteers and everything. And of course, they picked the kid who lived a little bit closer to LA and for whatever reason, who, by the way, I met since and we are friends now. And it's been so wonderful to connect with him and be like, you have the experience that I wanted when I was a kid. And he's like, well, you have the career that I wanted. I was gonna say, is he like an attorney now? He just doesn't know anything. He works. He works in animation. He's an incredibly talented artist and has a family and the sweetest man in the world. He's come to a couple things I've gotten to do. And I remember meeting him. He came to one of my one man shows, I think in New York City. And I was like, you're the guy, you're him.

Anyway, so that didn't happen. I didn't get to meet him then. And then I want to say probably six months later, he passed away. And I was devastated. I was so devastated when Jim died. It was the first, you know, besides a family member was the first time I knew what death really was like, you know, in that and to me, Jim had become, you know, my parents were divorced. I think looking back now in a very, you know, heady way, I think he'd become like a father figure to me. And so, you know, to lose, you know, a second father figure essentially was just horrible. And, you know, there was all this uncertainty, what's going to happen to the Muppets? And what's gonna Jim's gone, it was just this whole thing.

So I felt like my dream was dashed. And then if you fast forward, a few years later, I wrote to Kevin Clash, who was the original performer of Elmo on Sesame Street and and dinosaurs, you remember, the dinosaurs came out, he was not the mama dinosaur, and I was obsessed with that show obsessed. And then I wrote him a very similar kind of letter at this point, I'm like, probably 12 or 13. And I just said, you know, I want to work for the Muppets. And I love dinosaurs. I didn't know that since Jim had passed away, Kevin had kind of taken on a lot of the casting for the company. I didn't know that. But again, I think when you when you reach out, you write a letter in your earnest, sometimes that leads to something.

And he called my parents, he called our I probably wrote my phone number in the letter, because I was very determined as a kid. And he called and he basically said to my mom, if your son wants to be puppeteer, like he should come and watch us film. And so I got invited to come see the set of Sesame Street, you know, at this point, I'm about 13 or 14. And it was a dream come true. And it was like, I got to meet him, I got to try on all the original puppets. And we're having lunch. And I'll never forget this. We're having lunch. And I very kind of in a very ballsy way, said to Kevin, why did you call? Because at the time, you know, dinosaurs was huge. Elmo was becoming huge. Like they're all very, very busy people.

And he said, Oh, Jim used to talk about you. And I just was like, wait, what? And, and he said, Yeah, Jim used to talk about you. And he's like, you know, he's always looking for like new up and coming performers, because he recognized that this original generation of puppeteers was getting older, we needed to look to the younger group. And yeah, and so so in some very, very indirect, but I have to think magical, ethereal way. I always say I have my career because of Jim, even though I never met him, because not only did he inspire me, but because of maybe he just once, and I know my last name is like, you know, not the most common last name. So for whatever reason, my name stuck out. And and so when I happened to write another letter, it happened to kind of be a connection point.

And that got me that started me off. And so I started going up for like workshops to New York City, which were these like, I always joke now, because I'm on this side of things, but but they're basically lies. They call them workshops, but they're basically brutal auditions, where we were they would bring in like 50 puppeteers, people who wanted to be puppeteers. And it would start with like 50 people. And over like a three day process, you would get cut. Right. So it's basically like a chorus line, like everyone's there standing on the line ready to go. And then it's like, nope, not you. Not you. Not you. I was picturing a chorus line with like Rod and...

[25:36] John Tartaglia: With puppets on our hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not far from that, honestly. Yeah. And then yeah, and somehow I would always...

[25:40] John Tartaglia: I would always last. I think it's because of my musical theatre background as a kid, and I was really good at movement. So much of puppetry is about movement and choreography and coordination. So I worked my first legitimate day at 16, because I was old enough to be hired at that point on a part-time basis. I would just do background characters. I would assist characters and things like that. I remember walking out of the side of Sesame Street at 16 and being like, oh my god, this is my work. I work here now. So that's how I got to Sesame Street. And then to kind of go into what you were saying before about having a cue, I moved to New York at 18, did exactly what I dreamt of. I was going to go to college, and then I got the call at 18 to come to New York City and work full-time for Sesame Street.

So my parents were amazing, and they were like, okay, if you're going to do this, if you're going to skip college, if you're going to be an adult and go work a very adult career, you're going to live like an adult. And they helped me find an apartment, but then they were like, good luck. And I'm so thankful they did that, because I, at 18, had to learn how to pay rent, how to pay for electricity and cable and all those things. And I moved to New York City by myself at 18, lived in an apartment on the Upper East Side. I don't know how I'm not dead in the gutter, because that was a very scary, risky thing. I literally grew up on Sesame Street. My formative years were on Sesame Street. In high school, I was doing a lot of musical theatre.

I was the star of the shows in high school and stuff like that. I was that kid, I was the theatre kid who loved it. And when I got to New York, I really missed doing that, so I started auditioning professionally. So I had this dual dream, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I had the dream of working for the Muppets on Sesame Street, which I was doing. But then I had this other part of me that was like, I love Broadway and theatre. My dream is to be on Broadway, too. But I just wanted to be like, man number seven in the background. I would have been fine with that. You know what I mean? Or like, I don't even know what, like hyena number eight in The Lion King. That would have been fine. But I was out auditioning, and I did a lot of off-off Broadway, and I did the TheatreWorks tour.

I did a lot of treading the boards, pounding the pavement kind of stuff, auditioning for Broadway shows, hilarious things there. And then someone at Sesame Street knew that I was doing theatre. And Jeff Marks, who was one of the co-composers and co-creators of Avenue Q, was an intern at Sesame Street. And so he kind of knew who I was. He tells the story, he got fired because he wasn't a very good intern for the music department. And when they were putting together Avenue Q, which was going to be a TV show, actually, it was going to be like a Comedy Central-esque adult Sesame Street, long before Crank Yankers. No kidding. Yeah, they thought of me. And they said, you know, we need some young, you know, leading man type for this character, Princeton.

And he'll also play Rod. But they wanted it to be an actual, legit Sesame Street puppeteer, because it was about the puppetry at that point. And yeah, and we did a reading. And it was like five songs and four sketches. And that night, our Broadway producers were in the house watching this reading, and our future Broadway producers, and they were the ones who were like, this needs to be a piece of theatre. And that's what started it. And so basically, I accidentally fell into the creation of Avenue Q.

[28:56] Alan Seales: Wow.

[28:58] John Tartaglia: Yeah, and we did readings and workshops. And I kept, my joke was always as we were going, I was always, you know, I was savvy enough to know that like, you know, usually, usually on Broadway, you know, like a leading role is usually given to, you know, a celebrity or star or someone who's least well known. I was nobody in theatre at that point. So I was always joking, like, I'm waiting for the days when like, you know, they're like, surprise, like, we're replacing you with Neil Patrick Harris, or we're surprising you, we're replacing you with Joey Fatone or whomever. And no, but then we kept going and going. And then, you know, history is what it is. But we went off Broadway and then Broadway, and it just, my life changed.

So it was just another moment of, I really am a person who believes everything happens for a reason. I have to believe that because of my life and my trajectory and the way things have happened. And I think it's a case of like, never being afraid of hearing no, and also just writing letters and putting yourself out there and just being as, you know, as, as, as certain in your dreams as possible.

[30:04] Alan Seales: That's insane that you just like, you just took chances and followed every lead that was presented to you.

[30:11] John Tartaglia: And then you, yeah, yeah, I always say to people like, like, you know, it's so easy when you're in this business, whether you're a director or an actor, or whatever you are, that it's so easy to get so myopically focused on one thing, or just that one thing that you might miss out on other paths that get you there, but like, take you on these other amazing, you know, journeys to get there. And, and I look back at like, the, you know, when someone would say, Do you wanna take a dance class? I'm not a dancer, I can move well, but I'm not a dancer. But I'd say, sure. And I take that dance class. And then I can always look back and go, I'm so glad I took that dance class, because if I hadn't taken that dance class, I wouldn't have known this and that has paid off here.

Like, you know, like, someone invited me to like, a, you know, an arts and crafts meet up one time, and I was like, Okay, like, sure. And I went to that with not a huge interest, and walked away with all these skills of how I could make things myself to make my own puppets. Like, I think it's, it's amazing when you open yourself up to the universe, and to the ability to kind of pull from different places that tends to help you, I think, as an artist along the way.

[31:10] Alan Seales: Hang on, everybody, we're just gonna take a quick break.

[31:14] John Tartaglia: All right, now we're back. Okay, going into Avenue Q, the second, the other question of the Choose Your Own Adventure earlier, was it weird to be on stage and be seen? Like, because you're walking around with characters who are ignoring you, the person, the John.

[31:30] John Tartaglia: Yes. And I give such credit to Jason Moore, our director at Avenue Q, because he, you know, when we would perform the show in readings and workshops and things like that, you know, you could see the puppeteers. Because that was, you know, just, just, we didn't have scenery, because you were doing a reading or doing a workshop. And it was really Jason and our original producers who were like, no, no, no part of the magic of the show is seeing the puppeteers how they do it. Because everyone knows puppets like Miss Piggy and Kermit. When people don't know, still, there's still even Fraggle Rock to this day, when people come to the set, they're like, that's how you do it. They're so intrigued by how we do what we do, and the way we work together with, you know, someone's assisting a hand or someone's doing eyes or whatever.

So, so that became part of the magic. And they really built that into the show. And to answer your question, no, I mean, I, I kind of had this weird, I get visual, visuals of things. I always see things visually, I'm a very visual thinker. And I would kind of close my eyes when I was like 18, 19 years old, living in New York City in my apartment by myself, singing along to like the original, you know, cast recording of Rent and dreaming of being Mark in Rent. I would like stand there, and I would I would close my eyes and I would feel like, you know, what the spotlight on you must feel like and what the what it's, you know, standing in front of a Broadway audience must feel like and I would I would like visualize it.

And I always tell people, and this is the truth that I remember walking out for the first preview of Avenue Q on Broadway, you know, and I'm my in my role, Princeton, I was the first actor physically on stage, and I would walk out in the dark during applause and the lights would come up and I'd sing BA in English. And I remember, the feeling was exactly the same as what I imagined, like down to like the feeling of the spotlight, everything. The one thing I had not ever pictured was that my arm would be up in the air. But I feel like that's the magic of like, it took these two things that I loved, both equally and passionately and combined them. And that's the kind of thing where like, you have to believe that there's no pun intended, a purpose behind everything, because I don't know how else you could you couldn't have written that dealing.

I mean, you could you could not have written out like a more perfect situation for what I do. But no, I never thought in my wildest dreams, and that it would be the lead role. Again, I thought I was going to be like background guy seven, who moves the desk. I'm thrilled about that. I just wanted to be on stage, you know?

[34:03] Alan Seales: Wow, wow. And so rounding out the rest of the cast, were they looking for people also that had puppetry experience? Or did you find character actors that could then learn the puppetry or?

[34:06] John Tartaglia: No, in fact, that was a bit it was it was it had to be puppeteers. And I think there was such a recognition of, you know, what we did was so complicated. And just like that, you know, what made you care about those characters? You know, when Stephanie would sing fine, fine line with Kate, with Kate on her hand, you know, so many people would say after the show, I had this moment watching that where I was sitting there getting, you know, teary eyed, and some people crying, because I'd gone through a breakup or whatever. And then I would realize like 45 seconds into it. That's a puppet. Yeah. But it's a testament to the talent of someone like a Stephanie or Rick with Trekkie or Jen with Mrs. You know, tea or the Bad Idea Bears or everybody that we helped to believe it was real.

And so when it became like, oh, the show's gonna run, it's gonna have a hit on it's gonna have a run on Broadway. It was like, crap, we need to like, you know, not find more people. And and there's there's not a lot of puppeteers who do musical theater now there are, but there really weren't back in 2003. And and a lot of puppeteers get into puppetry to hide, they don't want to be seen as themselves. And Avenue Q was incredibly exposing. So it was hard. And so that's when they realized they had to start training people in the art of puppetry, which, you know, of course, was a little bit like clutch our pearls, because that's, you know, the opposite of what we did. But now what the beauty of that is that all of these musical theater people over the years doing the Broadway, off Broadway and tour and regional productions of Avenue Q now have the skill of puppetry, which is becoming so much more part of the theatrical world.

So it's cool that we got to kind of be a small part of that. But I remember Barrett Foe is a good friend of mine, and he was my original, one of my understudies. And, you know, we still joke about the fact that it was like, you know, when Barrett came in, everyone was kind of like side eye, musical theater guy, you're not a puppeteer. It's so funny to laugh about that. But yeah, well, some people kind of fall into it.

[35:58] John Tartaglia: And I enjoyed it. Okay, so I did The Secrets of Castle O'Sullivan at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Did you ever love it?

[36:03] Alan Seales: Did you ever see that?

[36:07] John Tartaglia: I did not, but I used to go to Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

[36:11] John Tartaglia: So the show no longer exists, but I don't know how long it was around for. For three years off and on, we rotated between the lead and the puppeteer, because the leprechaun, there was a stage left and a stage right leprechaun.

[36:24] Alan Seales: I love that you just like said it as if it was so normal to be like, and the leprechaun.

[36:28] John Tartaglia: Right. There was a stage left leprechaun, a stage right version, because they're both bolted in the set. And then a little tiny fairy world when the big reveal happens at the end and the walls open up and we're sending the leprechaun.

[36:45] Alan Seales: I'm so going to YouTube this after this.

[36:48] John Tartaglia: I can send you my recording of it. I have a recording of it.

[36:51] Alan Seales: Please do. I will.

[36:52] John Tartaglia: And it was a little trigger, like the mouth for the tiny Clancy, I assume is how the doozers work.

[36:58] John Tartaglia: Very similar, yeah. Similar, because the rumor was that the set was built by Jim Henson Shop. I think it was.

[37:03] Alan Seales: Oh, maybe.

[37:04] John Tartaglia: So we had big servos. I want to nerd out about the tech for a little bit. There's two reasons I'm bringing this up. Number one, I have puppetry experience. Are you hiring? Number two, I want to nerd out about the tech, because we would have problems with, and we'd have to have Clancy, what's the name of the leprechaun, come in and get serviced all the time because his eyes would stop moving or his mouth, the latex in the corner of his mouth would start to tear a little bit. But what got me really into puppetry when I was a little kid was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live action movie.

[37:40] Alan Seales: Oh, of course. Yeah, it's the classic.

[37:42] John Tartaglia: Because seeing all the servos and all the tech that went into the head.

[37:48] Alan Seales: Yeah. And that was so groundbreaking at that time.

[37:52] John Tartaglia: So groundbreaking. And really, it's funny, just to say really quickly, that actually started that technology that you're talking about. And it's very – oh, my dog just yelled. I'm glad that wasn't a child. In a very beginning way, it was started first with Dark Crystal and then Fraggle Rock. And so it kind of advanced – and Fraggle Rock did a lot for it, because the Gorgs were a very similar technology. And then that kind of just got more compact and more detailed and got put into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

[38:24] Alan Seales: Yeah, because I remember I was reading that all the control units were in the shell, so they had wires running down the head.

[38:29] John Tartaglia: But then for the second one, for Secret of the Ooze, it advanced. So I think they were able to control everything inside the head and make the suit a lot lighter or something. I don't know. I always wanted to design this kind of stuff. So when you are designing, and when you're creating your own puppets and whatnot, are you using all of this? And is it still, for the stuff that is animatronic-based, is it still completely like people off to the side with the controls and everything? It's very similar, yeah. What's changed is that things are smaller than they used to be, right? So now there's little servo motors that are like a half-inch large, which is crazy. And it's also just the quality has changed, and then everything is digital now as opposed to analog, right?

So you get all those different changes. And the Gorgs, for example, in the original series, they had basically two functions. They could blink their eyes and they could make their mouth flop, and that was kind of it. Which, again, for 1983, that was huge. And then when we brought them back, we were like, well, let's make them even more expressive. And so now with the technology that you have and the way that things are smaller and more compact, we could get more motors in the head. We could get more quality servos and better movements. So now they can curl their lips, and eyes can go back and forth, and Junior can have a little more of a smile. And so it's kind of just adapting that technology for what we do now, but still keeping the same fundamentals, the same principles.

[39:59] John Tartaglia: That's my favorite thing, honestly, is when we're in pre-production, when you go to the Creature Shop and they're building everything, and you're just seeing the inner workings of how it works, how it comes together. I'm great at like, showbiz, sequins, feathers, doing a show. They're like the masters of designs, and logistics, and engineering, and motors, and all the stuff that you're just like, how did you guys figure this out? I have such an appreciation for that. Yeah, that was always something that I thought I would really enjoy as a career, of engineering, the design. Yeah, turning a character design into a functioning head. I always thought I would enjoy that so much. But different life, different multiverse, that's what I'm doing.

But now coming back to Fraggle Rock and everything else you're doing, I just touched on Johnny and the Sprites for Disney Junior, and you've got, let's see, also stars Kip Wallaby in Jim Henson's Word Party, and Hank in Julie's Green Room starring Julie Andrews. You've got all this stuff you are involved with. You're creating your own, you're designing your own. At what point... Do I sleep? No. No, I was just... I want to nerd... I'm still nerding out on tech. Because I don't. I still want to nerd out on tech, because there's still the basic, basic Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, hand up a puppet, you're making the mouth move with your hand. There's no mechanics, there's no animatronics in it. But at what point when you're creating in your world, do you start to determine this needs to have that feature?

Those eyes need to move on their own. The doozers need to be four inches tall compared to Fraggle that are 10 inches. How do you start creating this world, and how does it translate to the technology? Because I'm a nerd.

[41:46] John Tartaglia: You know, I love you're a nerd, because I'm a nerd, too. I think, usually, it's what's the creative landscape of the show, what needs to happen, and then you kind of work from there, right? So like, for example, like with Fraggle Rock, you're like, okay, you know, you know that you have these three very different creatures, right? One, look at the Fraggles, like you said, are kind of your typical hand puppet, kind of puppet, right? But then you also need the doozers to exist, you know, as these little small creatures that, you know, are knee high to a Fraggle, they're about six inches or so, and they need to, you know, ride construction vehicles, they need to be hanging off the side of buildings, they need to, you know, be able to ride by and sing a song as they're in the back of a pickup truck.

And then you also have these giant lumbering creatures called the Gorgs, and you're going to oftentimes see the Fraggles with the Gorgs. So you start to kind of work from there. And it's like, how do we accomplish this? Now, I can't say that if today, if Fraggle Rock was a brand new series, right, that had no legacy, no expectations, no one knew what it was going to be. I don't know if you would do it all with practical puppetry. I think nowadays, with CG, being so incredibly, you know, I don't say easy, but it is easier to put into a show than it used to be. You know, you could do all the doozers in CG, you could probably even do the Gorgs in CG, or the Fraggles. But I think we felt like, no, there's a tangible, real feel to the show.

It has to feel that way. You know, we didn't want it to be all animated, because it would have been too easy. And it would have felt not like the Fraggle Rock that we love. So then you work backwards and you say, okay, so well, we still want to do the Gorgs as full body costumes. And, you know, we still want those faces to be expressive and to move and do everything. But now let's just make them a little bit better than they were before. Or like, you look at the doozers, and you're like, well, we still want them to like, be on the side of buildings. But like, one thing that I'll tell you that's cool, something that didn't exist back in the 80s that we've been able to take advantage of is, you know, little certain boards, computer boards, right, like that we have on our phones and things like that.

They've changed everything. Because now they're this big. It used to be like a computer, you had to have like the giant, old timey Apple, you know, with the wires running. Now it's all, you can put a, you know, I forget the name of it now, but a circuit board, I guess, or whatever you call it, into a computer chip into something. So now we can build doozers that have their own little computer board attached to them that can do the same motion over and over again, you can basically program them think of like, you know, like an animatronic from Disney World that like does the same small world again, small world, there you go. We can like program a doozer. Exactly. We can program a doozer to do that same motion.

And it can be a bunch of them a bunch of emotions over and over again, put that puppet hanging off of, you know, a stalactite in the background, and let it run all day and never think about it and never have to have someone puppeteer it. That's something you couldn't have done in 1983. Oh, wow. So it's taking it's the same technology in the sense of it's still a little motor driven puppet, but you're able to do it in a different way now than you were in the 80s. Or, you know, even like the miniature fraggles, if you look at the corks garden in the original, right, they'd have the corks and then to make the proper scale fraggles, they'd either be shot in front of blue screen, which we still do, or they'd have these little kind of like rod puppet, you know, fraggles that are the size of like a Starbucks cup, basically on little triggers a little service.

And they never quite looked great. Like everyone who worked in the original series will tell you they'll be like, yeah, they never we didn't love it. But it was what we could do. Now we're like, oh, well, let's that's when we can use our CG fraggles when we need to. So if you look at the first season of Back to the Rock, the reboot, there's a great moment in the pilot where like Junior, the fraggles run out and he sees them. And you see these fraggles, miniature fraggles running around Junior's feet. Well, you couldn't have really done that on blue screen. So we did CG double fraggles, and they work so well. And so it's like it just, it's just always kind of saying what is the creative call for it to decide how to do it.

It's rare that you go, I really want to build a, you know, an animatronic puppet, let me justify now how to fit that into a show. It's rare that happens. It's usually like, how do you use the technology that's available to make this creative idea come to life the best way?

[46:03] John Tartaglia: I dove into the behind the scenes of Team America when that movie came out. And I remember Trey Parker saying in one of the interviews, like they had to remove a set of servos because it made them look too real. And so I was going to bring up sort of the Uncanny Valley effect, right? When you're saying let's make the gorgs do more things, let's have more controls and more expressions, but at what point does it become too much where you're like, whoa, wait a second, I'm actually creeped out. You know, that's a great point. And actually, I think, you know, that movie of Team America, which is so funny, you know, they almost wanted the puppets to look like ridiculous puppets, right? Like they wanted you to see the string because I think it helped add to the irreverence of it and the craziness of it.

Obviously, with Fraggles and stuff like that, we want you to believe it's as real as possible. But to your point, we had that discussion of, we were looking at one point in really adding a lot of facial enhancements to the gorgs. Like we were going to actually kind of, because now the technology is there, that on top of what the servos could do on set, the motors, we're like, well, what if we went in with CG afterwards and really made their cheeks rise when they're happy and make their, you know, we had a scene, we were going to have the gorgs, I forget what we were going to do, it was like tears overflowing, all the stuff, we were going to make it super realistic. And it just felt so wrong for the aesthetic of the show, because to your point, it would have been like these weird, it would have been so real, it would have been uncomfortable.

And there's something glorious about like, the fraggles, right? Gobo is basically the equivalent, they're not ping pong balls, but they may as well be two white ping pong ball eyes, basically, with fur and feathers. And you believe he's real. He's the simplest Kermit the Frog, right? Simplest puppet on the earth. What makes him feel real is the way he's performed. You could add a ton of motors and make him blink. You could add little motors nowadays to make his little dimples go up and down. But it would just not feel right. And so yeah, you can take it too far is the is, I guess, the long way of saying that. And I love the magic of, you know, there's this great old story about Miss Piggy. Frank Oz used to get letters where people would say, Oh my gosh, my favorite thing in the world is when Miss Piggy bats her eyes at Kermit.

Well, here's the fun fact. Miss Piggy's eyes don't move, they're glued on, they don't move, they don't blink, they don't, there's not even eyelids that move. It's just the art of puppetry and Frank's brilliant performance of her that made people think, they fill in the blanks, that made people think that she was batting her eyes at Kermit or blinking at Kermit. But it was just the illusion of his puppetry that made you think that. And I love that.

[49:03] Alan Seales: Hey, this is Alan cutting in from the edit room. We're talking about the Mandela effect, which is a phenomenon where facts and events are collectively misremembered by thousands of people.

[49:10] John Tartaglia: I do. I totally know what you're talking about. Yeah. It's one of those things where, like Neil Armstrong didn't actually say it's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. He said something else, but now everyone remembers it the wrong way because that's how it is with puppetry. That's exactly right. But yeah, it's one of those things where the brain is uncanny in its ability to go from point A to point B. Like you said, it will fill in the blanks because it recognizes that if you have gone to point C, from point A you must have traveled through point B. And to save conscious processing power, I'm just going to extrapolate it and pretend it happened. Yeah. And you have to wonder when it comes to this, I feel like because puppetry is so primal, it's been around since caveman days, literally.

And so you're kind of like, is that why? Is that why, first of all, we're still so intrigued by it? I was just saying the other day that I really feel this is true, that puppetry is like the last magic trick that no one can actually tell you exactly how it's done. Meaning that we know how a stunt scene is done in a movie. We know how an explosion is done in a movie. We know how Siegfried and Roy's tricks were done. We're so savvy now as a collective society when it comes to behind the scenes and technology. But you put a really good puppeteer with a puppet on their hand in front of somebody, even an adult, a jaded adult, and somehow they just go with it and believe it and will talk to that character.

I would have Rod on my hand from Avenue Q and do interviews and things like that. And I would love nothing more than dealing with a newscaster who is just kind of grumpy or difficult and just taking the piss out of them with that character and seeing that the kid in them would come out eventually. And again, it's this guy holding this inanimate object on his hand. It's just the way I would do it and the believability of how I'd move the puppet that people would completely forget I was there. And I could say things of that character that I could never say as myself. But again, I think that's the magic trick. And I can't even tell you why. And I'm doing it. I have no idea. It's just something it's this magical thing that happens.

[51:20] Alan Seales: I wonder what the psychological reason is behind that. This is fascinating to me.

[51:25] Alan Seales: Hang on, everybody. We're just going to take a quick break.

[51:27] Alan Seales: All right, now we're back. You're right, because yeah, something you had said about watching the performance of Fine Line. You're right. I have to remind myself when I watch Avenue Q that the puppeteer is still on stage, because you're looking at the puppet who is being treated like an actual real tangible thing, a character, a person, by all the other actors on stage. So I think that's part of why all of this works, is because it's this combination. It's not just a giant realm of puppets, and that's why I think... Oh, man. I just had an epiphany. Sesame Street, probably exact same reason, because you've got real life people showing the audience that they need to believe these puppets are real. It's not just a puppet show. It's a show with characters. It's a show with characters that happen to be puppets.

[52:22] John Tartaglia: Well, that goes back to Doc and Sprocket. Yeah, that goes back to Lily Cooper as Doc. You know, it takes someone who really believes and really is willing to let them... They're the bridge, right? So if she didn't believe that Sprocket was real and didn't react to Sprocket as if Sprocket was real, I don't know if the audience would feel as empathetic towards that character, right? And there's a famous story. I won't say who it is, because I love this actress. I don't want to throw her under the bus. But there's a famous celebrity who's a beloved actress who was a guest on Sesame Street. And for all of the incredible acting skills she has, she could not get out of her head that there's a person below camera doing the puppets, and she could not believably act with the puppet.

And it is the most awkward thing to watch when you watch it, because you can feel it. It's like this weird, you know, unspoken thing that it's like, oh, this isn't working. So it's a testament to Anne Harada and Natalie Belkon and Jordan Gelber, you know, our original performers in Avenue Q, human performers, that you really believed them. You really believed those characters because they believed so, so strongly, for sure.

[53:33] John Tartaglia: Even on Sesame Street, too. I love watching celebrities talk to Elmo, especially because Elmo is a character that has been around forever, since their childhood, my childhood, everyone's childhood. Elmo's just always been there. And to get, it's like a dream come true for these people to see themselves actually on camera and interacting with this character that to them in their previous iterations of youth, right? It was real. Elmo was real to them. And still is. And so as adults, they're coming back and immediately you can see it's just like their eyes light up on camera. I love watching that. One of my favorite memories, I'll never forget this, is Noah Wyle. I don't know if you remember him from ER.

He was the biggest star at the time, came on the show. And, you know, again, he and George Clooney, they were like the stars, right? He walked on set and literally, I can see it. He walked out onto the set. We're all there with the puppets and stuff like that, working on something else. And he literally just started crying, like uncontrollably. And then Carol Spinney, who was the original Big Bird, God rest him. He was one of my favorite people. He came over because we knew that Big Bird was his favorite and started talking to him. And Noah was like this blubbering, beautiful mess where he was just like, he couldn't get over. He had a scene with Big Bird. He could barely get through it because he was just like, I cannot believe this is happening.

And it was certainly an appreciation for the mechanics of how it was happening. But he was like, no, no, no, this is Big Bird. I am talking to Big Bird and this is my friend. He's never not been my friend. And now we're meeting. And I just remember, I even get teary eyed thinking about it because it was the power of what this is and the impact. But we think about this all the time with Fraggle Rock that we're not just making a TV show. We're making best friends for kids literally around the globe who, like in my case, as a divorced kid that needed an escape. I think that's why I became so obsessed with the show is it was a place to escape to. And these were characters that were my friends. I didn't have a lot of friends as a kid.

It was like that importance. That's not just making a funny sitcom that adults watch, you know, every Friday night. You're making something that is possibly saving lives. You're making something that is connecting with people in a way that may, you know, like in my case, encourage them to go off and do something with their lives, you know. And at the very least, you're making something that because of the messages in the show might help people, kids have a better outlook on life or look at things in a way differently than they would have otherwise. And I think that that is such a privilege and a responsibility. And if you think about it too much, you like have a nervous breakdown. But, you know, it's something to remember. On the hardest days on set, when we were exhausted, we tried to remind ourselves of that, that it's like it's the greatest responsibility you can have, I think.

[56:27] Alan Seales: That's beautiful. And I think it's a wonderful place to start to transition and wrap up because you said it so beautifully. I've got a new segment. This is now the third time I'm doing it and I hope it goes well. I need you to give me a number one through eight and I'm going to tell you, I'm going to put 60 seconds on the clock and you have to tell me the plot to that popular musical in 60 seconds or less. So one through eight.

[56:45] John Tartaglia: Okay. Which I have my musicals listed one through eight. Which one do you want to do?

[56:56] John Tartaglia: Oh, Jesus. Like I can just pick a number?

[57:02] Alan Seales: Yeah. And it'll correspond to something, to a musical that I will tell you.

[57:05] John Tartaglia: What if I don't know the musical? Okay.

[57:07] Alan Seales: Then you better be a good storyteller.

[57:08] John Tartaglia: I have 60 seconds.

[57:10] Alan Seales: Yep.

[57:10] John Tartaglia: To tell you the plot of this musical. Okay. Number four.

[57:15] Alan Seales: Okay. All right. 60 seconds on the clock. You have starting. Now you have to tell me the plot to Hamilton. Go.

[57:21] John Tartaglia: 60 seconds remaining. Okay. Hamilton. Based on a famous political figure, Alexander Hamilton, we follow his journey from how he started off as a young man, all of the incredible forces in his life, including his wife. That influenced him and changed him. We go on him with him on a journey through both the highs and severe lows of his personal and political life. And then really realize at the end of the day that it is his wife's story. She continues on the legacy. There's that. Oh, my God. I mean, what else is there to say? It features the most incredible direction and choreography, Tommy Kail and Andy Blankenbuehler staging, gorgeous set design. It changed the face of Broadway. Lin-Manuel Miranda. It was his passion project. People thought he was crazy when he first did that original song at the White House. But then of course, it turned out to be this thing you couldn't even not get tickets for. I love it. I see it so many times. And it's brilliant.

[58:30] Alan Seales: I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. But now I want to know, wait, I have to ask you then, because I almost picked number two. What's number two?

[58:33] John Tartaglia: Frozen.

[58:35] Alan Seales: Oh, I'm about to direct that. I could have told you that easier. My goodness.

[58:41] Alan Seales: All right. So the three standard closing questions now that I ask everyone to wrap up the episodes. The first one just very simply is what motivates you?

[58:50] John Tartaglia: Oh, God. Jim. Jim Henson. I look at the limited time that he was given and the amazing impact he made on this earth. I mean, it's incredible to think, you know, in a career, less than 40 years of a career, he literally gave us more cultural touchstones than I would say next to Walt Disney. I think it was Jim and Walt Disney and his passion for what he did. And I think that work ethic and that belief in making a difference with your art is something that even at my most exhausted, I try to think about and try to think about how I get to carry that on. And that's such an incredible gift.

[59:36] Alan Seales: What advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[59:43] John Tartaglia: Younger advice to myself. Oh, gosh, to trust what you what your passion is and to not let others' opinions of the reality of it coming true influence you. The only times I feel like I ever fell off the path or any times I ever felt like I lost myself was when I let others' opinions on the ability for me to achieve my dreams come into play. And I think we have to believe so deeply in what we want to do for it to happen. And I would also say to not be such a people pleaser. I am a people pleaser. It's something I struggle with all the time and that it's okay to sometimes say no and to sometimes, you know, take care of yourself first. That's very difficult for me. And for other people, I would say, similar to what I said earlier, it's so vital that you believe passionately in your dream.

And the reason why people might say no to the realities of you, of your dream coming true is because it's not theirs and it's not their path. And so they don't see it the way you see it. And their journey and their abilities and their realities are different than yours. And you have to believe in those things for you. And I would say just to be as kind and as grateful and as collaborative as you can possibly be, because the people you work with when you're 18 or 19 years old, you will have the ability to work with many years later. And sometimes they're the reason why you get that next opportunity. And I really believe everyone deserves to be treated with kindness.

[1:01:14] Alan Seales: Well, you can still be a puppet pleaser. That's okay. But less people-pleasing, more puppet-pleasing.

[1:01:20] John Tartaglia: I'm definitely a puppet pleaser, yeah.

[1:01:21] Alan Seales: Okay, okay, good. Last question, then. Hardest one. If you can only see one show for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what would you see?

[1:01:30] John Tartaglia: Oh, come on. That's cruel. It's the hardest question. You know what? The first thing that just came to me, because it's my favorite musical and I still think it's one of the most brilliantly constructed shows, with the best score ever, is Little Shop of Horrors. I literally think it's like – you know what I mean? Those Howard Ashman lyrics and gorgeous Alan Menken melodies and that direction and the book. It's so good. I love that show so much.

[1:01:56] Alan Seales: Can you bring in an Audrey II nod in Fraggle Rock somewhere? Just put a little carnivorous plant in the back?

[1:02:04] John Tartaglia: You know, there's a character in season two that's from the original series called Lamford, and he's Moki's pet plant. And he has a very kind of Venus flytrap element to him. So, I love Lamford.

[1:02:20] Alan Seales: So, how can we connect with you online on the social medias?

[1:02:38] John Tartaglia: You can find me at JohnnyTartags on Instagram. You can find me under my name on Facebook, and I'm on Cameo. You can request a video from me on Cameo.com slash JohnnyTartags. I'm not on the TikTok. I should be on the TikTok, but I'm not on the TikTok. But someday I'll be on the TikTok.

[1:02:57] Alan Seales: Can you put Gobo on TikTok?

[1:02:59] John Tartaglia: Gobo's been on TikTok. Gobo's been on more cool social media places than I have.

[1:03:06] Alan Seales: Very fair.

[1:03:11] John Tartaglia: Yeah, well, make sure that, let's see, beginning streaming on March 29th is the next season of Fraggle Rock on Apple TV. So, I've got to check it out. I've been watching it already. It's so much fun. I've been texting all my friends like, I'm feeling so nostalgic. I want to watch it. Our second season is epic. I'm really proud of it.

[1:03:34] Alan Seales: It's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. So, wonderful job. Congratulations on everything.

[1:03:39] John Tartaglia: Thank you.

[1:03:39] Alan Seales: You can get more of me on threads, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Leave a reading and a review where you're listening now. Thanks to Jukebox the Ghost for the intro and outro music, and Johnny Tartaglia, thanks for this convo. Tell Gobo and all the doozers I said hi, especially Sprocket.

[1:03:55] John Tartaglia: I sure will, pal.

[1:03:56] Alan Seales: All right. It's good to see you and wonderful to have the talk.

[1:04:00] John Tartaglia: Thank you. Thanks for having me.