Avenue Q

Avenue Q is a musical comedy featuring puppets and human actors with music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx and book by Jeff Whitty. The show's format is a parody of Sesame Street, but its content involves adult-oriented themes.

Avenue Q's cast consists of three human characters who interact with eleven puppet characters. The puppets are animated and voiced by puppeteers who appear on stage, unconcealed. The puppet and human characters ignore the puppeteers, creating the illusion that the puppets are alive. To assist with the illusion, the puppeteers wear plain gray clothing in contrast to the human and puppet characters' colorful costumes. re puppets simultaneously.

Russ Borski and I originally designed and built the 11 puppets with detachable costumed bodies for Cain Park's 2003 production of Avenue Q. We expanded on that process with a CSU summer research grant to create a video workshop with filmmaker Rafeeq Roberts entitled "The Art of Polyfoam Puppetry" in 2014.

In conjunction with the CSU Department of Theatre and Dance 2023 Avenue Q revival, I taught an independent study course using the video to teach students how to build polyfoam puppets in our original style. The class puppets were incorporated into the "cast" of puppet characters in performance.