Aanika’s Elephants

About the Show

Adventure into the African savanna with Aanika, a Kenyan girl who befriends a baby elephant she names Little. Their bond of sisterhood shows that a family can be anything—an animal orphanage, a widowed father and daughter, a herd of hunted elephants. With music, a variety of puppets and gentle humor, the stirring story of Aanika’s Elephants by Annie Evans, an Emmy Award-winning writer for Sesame Street, entertains and educates on the present-day plight of Africa’s elephants.

Things to Know

1. This is our second show this season about elephants. The first, The Vanishing Elephant, is about an Indian elephant, and this show is about African elephants, who grow to be much bigger than their Asian cousins.
2. Playwright Annie Evans has always been fascinated by elephants. She even studied their migration patterns as part of an Earthwatch Institute team in Kenya in 2000.
3. After working together for 15 years on Sesame Street, Annie Evans married Martin P. Robinson, who plays the elephant-like character Mr. Snuffleupagus and designed all the puppets in Aanika’s Elephants.

About the Artists

Feisty Elephant is the production company started by Annie Evans. Her plays have been produced around the world, and she has written for many children’s TV programs, most notably Sesame Street, for which she has received 13 Emmys. She wrote on the U.S. version of the show for 22 years, story-edited other versions in Bangladesh, India and Indonesia, and led writing workshops in Mexico, Northern Ireland and South Africa.

From their original play Zwerge to the short film Adventures of Liverwurst Girl, puppets large and small are in Little Shadow Productions’ DNA. Helmed by producer Jean Marie Keevins, Little Shadow aims to shine a light on meaningful stories and the people who tell them. Producing can call for everything from puppetmaking to screenwriting, but a healthy dose of curiosity is constant.

When she’s not wearing the director’s hat for Aanika’s Elephants, Pam Arceiro is also co-producing the show! Pam serves as the Artistic Director of the National Puppetry Conference at the O’Neill Theater Center and has been a principal puppeteer on Sesame Street for more than 30 years, performing numerous characters, most notably the trash- and Oscar-loving Grundgetta Grouch.