Tarah Lynne Schaeffer


Tarah Lynne Schaeffer is an American former child actress, Twitch streamer and book critic. She is known for her role on Sesame Street.
She was cast in 1993 as the first Sesame Street cast member with disabilities - she was born with a disorder called osteogenesis imperfecta. She remained on the show for eight seasons.

Personal life

Schaeffer was raised in Plainville, Connecticut where she was discovered by Sesame Street talent scouts searching for a child actors that would add diversity to the street. Schaeffer had been on the Newington Children's Hospital's award-winning Cruisers wheelchair athletic team and impressed the show's producers with her wheelchair racing skills and other modified track and field talents.
Schaeffer appeared on Sesame Street for eight seasons. She became more and more featured in the scripts, and at times would travel two or three times a week from Connecticut to the studio in New York City. However when her family moved to Reading, Pennsylvania in the late 1990s, the trip to New York became more difficult, and both Tarah and her family felt it was time to move on
Schaeffer graduated from Daniel Boone High School in 2002, and as of February 2007, she is a fifth-year student of professional writing with a minor in women's studies at a school near her home. She plans to pursue a job as a book critic or in publishing.

Career

A 2000 Sesame Workshop newsletter mentioned Tarah's inclusion in the cast as one of the top ten significant ways Sesame Street has encouraged diversity:
Sesame Street writer Emily Perl Kingsley was a strong supporter of Schaeffer's inclusion in the cast. Kingsley's episode "Tarah's Ballet," which features a wheelchair dance, gained her a Grand EDI. Kingsley also drafted many guests with disabilities, such as Itzhak Perlman and the Little Theater of the Deaf. The integration of Schaeffer exemplified Kingsley's views: