Sonia Manzano with Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Sonia Maria Sotomayor

I was coming of age at the time, it was the '60s I wanted to change the world and so did 'Sesame Street.' I had an idealistic fervor and I was lucky to find a platform that embraced that and wanted to change the lives of children.' ''Sesame Street' was one of my first auditions in the city. 'I think that I had the rare opportunity of falling into 'Sesame Street' sort of right out of CMU,' she said. When Manzano left Carnegie Mellon in the late 1960s to star in the original Off-Broadway production of 'Godspell,' created by fellow CMU graduate Stephen Schwartz (A 1968), she knew she wanted to change the world with her art, but she wasn't yet sure how to make that happen. Manzano mentioned she was retiring from 'Sesame Street' during a speech at the annual conference of the American Libraries Association last month. 'All of the outpouring of affection because of this inadvertent release of information has been a wonderful surprise.' 'I feel like I blinked and the years have gone by,' Manzano said. The actress, who's played Maria on the public access children's program since 1971, is retiring. The scene was designed to help children use their imaginations. 'Somebody come and play, somebody come and play today-ay,' sang Sonia Manzano (A 1972), describing a scene from a ' Sesame Street' film of a playful gorilla at the zoo.