Avenue Q – The Grownup Musical With Puppets

Interview With Avenue Q Librettist Jeff Whitty

Oct 4, 2009

Even creators Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty didn't guess that their musical Avenue Q would become a Broadway musical hit and Tony Award winner.

Some people might have been surprised when they heard that the 2003 Tony Award for Best Musical had gone to a puppet show. That’s because North Americans tend to think of puppets as toys for the entertainment of children. But many cultures view puppets differently; in Japan, for instance, Bunraku puppets are manipulated by visible puppeteers. Indonesia has its Wayang Kulit, or shadow puppetry.

The Tony-winning show in question, Avenue Q, started as an idea for a television show conceived by two of its creators, Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, to teach adult life lessons. It’s a story about a recent college graduate named Princeton who comes to live in the big city, and his assorted neighbours who are trying, like him, to build lives in a difficult world.

Like Sesame Street (which it tends to mirror in many ways), its characters inhabit a cheerfully gritty New York City streetscape. And, as in the tradition of Bunraku, the puppeteers are visible to the audience and do not try to mask the fact that they are speaking for the puppets.

Surprise Hit Opened in Small Theatre

Avenue Q’s immense popularity was a surprise even to its creators. “I’m glad we had no premonition that it would go to Broadway, because there would have been so much pressure,” says Jeff Whitty, who wrote the show’s libretto. “The first theatre where it opened was about 125 seats, the Vineyard Theatre in New York. And then it got a huge response and we heard that it was going to Broadway. We didn’t know whether it would work in a bigger theatre, but actually it worked much better; we had 800 senses of humour instead of 120, so the audience response is that much bigger.”

Initially, some people are turned off the idea of the show when they hear the main characters are puppets, says Whitty. “People sometimes get afraid of them; they think it’s going to be childlike or obvious, and we tried from the very beginning not to make it a show about puppets swearing, because that’s only funny for about two minutes,” he says. “There’s an element of sadness, too, because it’s about a person who happens to be a puppet trying to find the meaning in his life, so there’s a deeper resonance to the show.”

Changing Trends on Broadway

Avenue Q is one of several smaller shows (like The Drowsy Chaperone and Urinetown) that have succeeded on Broadway when bigger, glitzier shows have failed. “The big period of the megamusical may be over,” Whitty muses. “People have developed a hunger for more quality and I think people can appreciate more than ever things that are hand-crafted on a smaller scale. People want to use their imaginations and they don’t want to be deprived,” he says.

“People keep saying it’s going to die, and I don’t think it’s ever going to, because theatre, more than anything, lets you use your imagination.”

The original version of this article was published in Tandem magazine in July 2008.

The copyright of the article Avenue Q – The Grownup Musical With Puppets in North American Musical Theatre is owned by Sarah B. Hood. Permission to republish Avenue Q – The Grownup Musical With Puppets in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.