Sesame Street has introduced a new cast member – a seven-year-old girl in a wheelchair named Elin. The doll is designed to show that disabilities are a part of everyday life and should be normalized. Elin is played by Iris Schleuss and hand player Charlie Kaiser, who use a real converted children’s wheelchair for the highest possible identification. The team faces the challenge of playing Elin backwards, and when she moves through Sesame Street, one must push and one must turn the wheels of the wheelchair.
The idea behind Elin comes from René Schaar, NDR’s equal opportunities officer, who approached the Sesame Street editorial team to discuss diversity. “One of the issues that we really have to deal with is the question of how we deal with disabilities… It’s a piece of normality that we show disabilities,” says NDR program director Frank Beckmann. In Germany, a doll in a wheelchair is something unique and Sesame Street hopes to use it to signal to children that disabled children are part of everyday life.
Elin has already completed her first day of shooting on Sesame Street and took part in the “Prima Klima” quiz. The show will also address environmental and climate protection issues in an entertaining and child-friendly way. The new episodes of “Sesame Street” will be broadcast from autumn 2023 in the ARD media library, on KiKA, on NDR television, and on sesamstrasse.de.
