Avenue Q September 17, 2008

In any theatrical venture it’s nice to have co-stars that watch your back. That’s literally what Kate Monster, Nicky and Rod, Lucy T. Slut and rest of the Avenue Q puppets count on.

As the seven cast members of the plucky Tony-winning best musical of 2004 fine-tuned a production number— “It Sucks to Be Me”—before embarking on the national tour, that interconnectedness was evident. There were 11 faces but only seven pairs of legs. That’s because four performers in the youthful, fresh-faced cast have to be quadruple threats, acting, singing and dancing while they manipulate an assortment of puppets, from Princeton, an earnest college grad searching for a purpose in life, to the Internet-porn-obsessed Trekkie Monster (think a very naughty Cookie Monster).

And be warned. These puppets may look as adorable and innocuous as Elmo, Grover, Big Bird and all the other “Sesame Street” residents who teach kids their ABCs and 1-2-3s. (They were designed by onetime Jim Henson puppeteer and original Avenue Q cast member Rick Lyon.) But this lot faces problems of a much more grownup nature—jobs, money, relationships and sex (or lack thereof)—as they, like a lot of young people, try to make their way in the world. “We’re teaching and learning as children’s television does, but now we’re into negotiating through the breakup of a relationship, which is not as easy as learning the letter A,” says associate director Evan Ensign.

No matter how adult their predicaments are, however, the puppets not only keep the spirit of play alive, they get away with all sorts of salacious behavior because they’re just so darn cute. “Puppets can say things that adult human beings probably couldn’t,” adds Ensign. “There’s something comforting about them. Because we associate puppets with children’s television, we can actually tackle some concepts a little more head on than we might if we had an all-human-being company.” That may be why a song called “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” provokes more laughter than indignation—and why a rather explicit puppet sex scene seems adorable instead of deplorable.

The fabricated stars are in good hands—or have good hands in them, as the case may be. Those who don’t have puppet-handling on their resumé prior to Avenue Q go through a boot camp of sorts that begins during the audition process, when potential cast members spend a weekend getting to know their would-be co-stars.

To quote puppeteer Jennifer Barnhart who was in the original cast: “I [told] all the kids that you’re basically performing in a foreign language and that you have to become conversationally fluent. You have to learn to communicate an idea through the language of the puppet, and getting your hand to do what your mouth does requires reprogramming.”

Unlike “Sesame Street” and similar children’s programs, where the puppeteers are hidden behind a wall, in Avenue Q they’re completely visible as they interact with the other cast members. And that adds another level to their work. Not only do they have to focus on what they’re doing onstage, they have to pay attention to their puppets as well.

“When you’re in the rehearsal room, you have the privilege of being in front of a mirror,” says Robert Mc- Clure, who plays Princeton and Rod, a puppet struggling with sexual identity who has the hots for his straight roommate, Nicky (think Ernie and Bert with copious amounts of sexual tension).

“That makes all the difference, because you can check to see how your puppet’s doing. Once you’re onstage you’re sharing focus with the puppet. Whatever he’s looking at you’re looking at, because you’re supposed to be an appendage of the puppet. You have to get so comfortable in the mirror that once it’s gone you can trust that you’re still doing what you’re supposed to with the puppet.”

But in spite of the presence of various colleagues, both puppet and human, performances can feel like a solo effort. When McClure was appearing in the Broadway production, he enjoyed bantering with one of his human co-stars before the show but barely acknowledged him when they were onstage. “Because I was looking at his puppet and he was looking at mine, we never saw each other, so it was a bit of a lonely evening,” says the longtime Muppets fan, who admits to crying when he attended a taping of “Sesame Street.” “You have to be a little bit of an introvert and be willing to throw that puppet out there because that’s what it’s all about.”

And it takes a very generous performer—one who doesn’t get jealous easily—to share the stage with a puppet. Like animals and children, they command attention, and even though the actor-puppeteers aren’t ventriloquists—you see their lips moving along with the puppets’—it’s the inanimate one that tends to come alive before the audience’s eyes.

(Christian Anderson, who played Trekkie Monster and Nicky in the Broadway production, was almost not recognized by a woman who’d just seen the show when he was collecting donations for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS post-performance. “She dropped her money in the bucket and walked out,” he remembered. “Then she came back and said, ‘Oh, I didn’t even recognize you. I was watching your puppet the whole time.’ That’s hard to get used to, but it’s such a compliment because it means she believed what I was doing with the puppets.”)

If anything caught Avenue Q composer-lyricists Bobby Lopez and Jeff Marx off guard four years ago, it was the Cinderella-story success of their little musical and the impact it’s had on their lives since its Off-Broadway debut at the Vineyard Theatre in 2003 and Broadway transfer a few months later.

Since then Lopez and Marx have collaborated on a musical episode of “Scrubs,” but these days the former is working with his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez. They wrote a 35-minute Finding Nemo musical for Disney World and are working on an original autobiographical musical in the same vein as Avenue Q, puppets and all. “It looks at relationships from a different angle than Avenue Q,” Lopez says. “That piece still doesn’t have an official title, and is only half finished. It’s a commission from the Roundabout Theatre. We’ll be doing a reading of act one sometime in the next few months.”

However, like puppet alter ego Princeton, it seems that Lopez and Marx have found their purpose in life.

“When we first did [Avenue Q] Off-Broadway, we were complete nobodies with no careers yet,” Lopez recalls. “I was an intern and did a lot of temping. Jeff too. Then our lives changed because of this. We’ve all grown up so much since the show started.”

Clearly, it doesn’t suck to be associated with Avenue Q.

Official Website: http://www.denvercenter.org/event_calendar/caldetail.cfm?id_production=56989683