Arthur Crank on The Electric Company.įor all of the challenges going on behind the scenes, The Electric Company was considered a success.
But she's immensely proud that she and the other actors "were all teachers and just had to show that the learning was fun."Īctor Jim Boyd prepares for his role as J. She says that as a comedian, being told to slow down and "linger on the word on the screen" could be awful. Her myriad characters included Jennifer of the Jungle, Julia Grown-Up and The Witch. They don't get it." Even though much of the material was "hilarious," she says, it might not have been "if you're 7 and having trouble in school and at home." One writer joked that being asked to do two funny minutes on the consonant blend "fl" was a nightmare.Ĭast member Judy Graubart came to The Electric Company from The Second City in Chicago. "Kids don't know Fargo, North Dakota," Fowles points out. Take the detective character Fargo North, Decoder (get it?), who would solve missing-letter mysteries. "It was often hard to get the writers to sort of dial it back, to convince them that they were little children," she remembers. Given that the target audience was kids who were falling behind, Fowles believes much of the material was over their heads. But, he acknowledges, "there was a constant tension between the writers and the curriculum people, as you would expect." Fowles agrees: "We did a lot of kind of wordplay, which I think was probably a mistake." "We thought of as a comedy show that tried to teach," says Gibbon. Writing jokes that also teach language skills is hard Writers and researchers for The Electric Company, including Barbara Fowles (second from left), sought to educate through entertainment.
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