TheElectricCompany

The Core Cast

There are six main characters that make up the core Company. Each of these characters has a singular magical ability to produce, control, manipulate and play with words and letters.

Marcus Barnes (Coy Stewart)

Marcus is the newest and youngest member of the Electric Company. A natural comedian, Marcus is a charismatic and fresh-faced neighborhood kid who recently discovered that he has "the power." Since everything is new to him, he can get over-excited and sent off on tangents, so sometimes the others have to rein him in. The rest of the Company has embraced him and his special number power is a big help to their collective powers. He finds math and visualizing calculations delightful and loves to explain it...sometimes long past when everybody has already grasped the idea!

Lisa Heffenbacher (Jenni Barber)

Lisa is quirky, funny and full of life. She is a collector of words and is easily distracted. Lisa tends to be accident prone. Her superpower is the ability to solve any word problem at super-human speed; be it an anagram, a rebus or any form of text that has been altered by our villains. She's a dynamic singer, but dancing is a challenge because she is a bit of a klutz. In season 3 of The Electric Company, Lisa has gone to Space Camp, and although she's not involved in every adventure around the neighborhood, she still checks in with her fellow Electric Company members from time to time.

Hector Ruiz (Josh Segarra)

Hector has recently finished college and has taken over running The Electric Diner for Keith's father, Leo. This supercharged Latino, with the boy band voice and moves, is a healthy risk-taker. Hector's literacy superpower is the ability to visually recall in minute detail anything that has occurred around him. He can zero in on unnoticed details that can lead to important information that helps with solving problems. Hector is slightly vain and is somewhat obsessed with his appearance.

Jessica Ruiz (Priscilla Diaz)

Jessica is a teenager and a natural problem solver. She is gutsy, and despite her youth, she isn't going to take any guff from the bad guys. She can dance and she can rap. Jessica's literacy superpower is total aural recall; she can replay and display in text anything that is said. Even though Jessica's brother, Hector, is seven years older, Jessica likes to act like the big sister, which can often drive him nuts.

Shock (Chris Sullivan)

Shock is a contemporary Buster Keaton with a wide-open sweetness and a relentless imagination. Shock works in the Electric Diner and occasionally helps in the decoding of words there. He does so without skipping a beat, in fact as a vocal percussionist, he often provides the beat. He does not always directly participate in solving the problems of the Electric Company, but when we see him out in the neighborhood, his presence will often have accidental positive or negative effects. But positive or negative, he is a reliable device in comic relief. In the interstitials, his freestanding segments help drive home the curriculum of the show.

Keith Watson (Ricky Smith)

Keith is a 15-year-old upbeat, cool kid who is confident, optimistic, open and charming. He is comfortable with kids and adults and has remarkable political skills for one so young. He's a natural negotiator. His literacy superpower is the ability to create pictures from words; he can turn any graphic text into an animated drawing, allowing us to visualize vocabulary in quick fun doses.

The Pranksters

Like our core characters, the pranksters have individualized special powers. They have unique ways of altering words and creating mayhem in the neighborhood. With varying ages between 17-20 years old, these villains are driven not by greed, but are motivated by the sheer joy of being naughty and creating chaos.

Francine Carruthers (Ashley Morris)

Francine is a power mad teenager obsessed with popularity and wants to be the president of The Electric Company. She has the basic letter throwing skills that members of the Company also possess. Desperate for attention, she has an artistic streak and will do whatever she can to make certain her creative expressions are noticed. She leaves clues in the form of rhyming poems and has a secret crush on Hector.

Gilda Flip (Carly Sonenclar)

Gilda is a prankster-in-training that lives in Francine's building. Francine has taken her under her wing, agreeing to teach her about pranksterism and life in general. She is extremely well organized and eager to please, a true type-A personality, who has folders of information at the ready even before Francine asks for them. She also has some impressively nefarious ideas for a girl her age. Sometimes Francine allows Gilda to help Annie, but only for a specified amount of time. She thinks that Francine is the coolest and smartest girl she knows and hopes one day to be just like her. And why does she feel that way? Because Francine has told her so, many times.

Danny Rebus (Will Harper)

Danny leaves riddles in rebus form, creating havoc within the neighborhood and the people in it. He is super touchy and offended by the most innocuous perceived transgression. His good traits are that he's a whiner, a grudge-holder and an all around bitter pill.

Annie Scrambler (Sandie Rosa)

Annie is sworn to create chaos by scrambling text in the neighborhood. Don't let the sugary exterior fool you, this bon bon has a toxic center. She is an impish time bomb who will lull you into a false sense of security and throw your world into chaos by scrambling information, messages and even eggs.

Manuel "Manny" Spamboni (Dominic Colón)

Manny is a tech whiz who hacks and builds gizmos to thwart our heroes. What he lacks in social graces and regular hygiene habits, Manny makes up for with his tech savvy and unquenchable desire to triumph over The Electric Company. He rides a tricked out bicycle, which is basically an FBI crime lab with ten speeds and a banana seat. Any change in The Electric Company's reputation is a cause for pure delight.

The contents of this media kit were developed under grant #U295A100025 from the Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.