More-inclusive Wiggles show returns to Long Island 

Concertgoers who attend The Wiggles’ live show in Westbury on Sept. 17 might think they are seeing double.

The famed Australian family entertainment group had four Wiggles for the first 30 years of its existence, one each dressed in their signature blue, red, yellow and purple jerseys. But two years ago, The Wiggles added four more performers to be more diverse and reflect the group’s audiences, says Wiggles founder Anthony Field, 60, the only original Wiggle to still perform on stage.

Now eight Wiggles will sing and dance during the “Ready, Steady, Wiggle! Tour,” two of each color of what the Australians call skivvies but we in the United States would call a mock turtleneck. One of the new performers is Black and another is indigenous Australian, and half of the Wiggles are now women (the group originally was all men but added one woman for the first time in 2013).

“The world is not just blue-eyed people who’ve got lighter skin,” Field says during a Zoom interview from Sydney. “Our audience comes from all around the world, all different diverse backgrounds. The children have got a lot more role models they can choose.” The group is returning to the United States for the first time since its expansion.

FROM VHS TAPES TO YOUTUBE

The mushrooming of the group isn’t the only change over the past 32 years. The entertainers adapted from selling VHS tapes to DVDs to focusing on YouTube videos. “When we started, it was just the television. Children would get up and have a dance and then they would go outside and play. Not as much these days. It keeps me really interested in how we communicate with children on the new world of little screens,” Field says.

Other things will remain the same — joining the Wiggles on Long Island will be their character actors Dorothy the Dinosaur, Wags the Dog, Henry the Octopus, Captain Feathersword and the backup Wiggly dancers. And the group still performs its original hits along with its new tunes — oldies include “Fruit Salad,” and “Toot Toot, Chugga Chugga, Big Red Car.”

Field says one of his favorite songs to perform is “Rock-A-Bye Your Bear.” “A lot of parents, it’s the first song they sing with their children, and that’s why I love it,” he says. He also says they’ll surely perform “Central Park New York,” which includes the line “g’day squirrels” because Australians are fascinated by the creatures that they don’t have in Australia, Field says.

In Australia, parents who watched The Wiggles as preschoolers themselves now bring their own children to concerts, he says. The Wiggles didn’t explode in popularity in the States until the early 2000s, so in a few years that parental nostalgia may start to happen here as well.

MEET A NEW WIGGLE OF COLOR

One of the new Wiggles is Tsehay (pronounced Sah-high) Hawkins, age 17. She was adopted from Ethiopia when she was 7 months old. Growing up in Australia, her bedroom was plastered with pictures of Princess Tiana, the first African American animated Disney Princess. “She’s Black, she has curly hair, she was my icon. My bedroom was decked out in her gear because it was someone who looked like me and I related, and I thought I can be amazing, I can work hard, because she can,” Hawkins says in a Zoom interview.

Now, Hawkins says she has the same chance to be a role model for other children of color. “For children to feel like they can belong, and that they can fit in, they can do something in the future, they need to see someone like themselves represented,” she says. “If you can see it, you can be it.”

Hawkins is a yellow Wiggle, and she wears a headband of bright yellow sunflowers and sunflower earrings. Children come to concerts dressed as her, she says. “I thought that was absolutely surreal,” she says. She bubbles over with enthusiasm talking about it, often breaking into infectious giggles.

Another new Wiggle is illustrative of the longevity of the group — Field’s 19-year-old daughter, Lucia, born while her father was a Wiggle, has now finished Australian ballet school and joined the group as the second blue Wiggle. “I didn’t even know she could sing,” Field says. “I never thought she’d be in The Wiggles. It’s been the best. I was away so much, getting to know her as an adult, I’m in awe of her talent.”

As for Field’s plans for how long he’ll continue with the group he founded, he says “I feel like they’ll wheel me out. There’s never a bad day in Wiggleland. I love it.”

By Beth Whitehouse

beth.whitehouse@newsday.comBethWhitehouse1

Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.