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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. It won Best Musical, Book, and Score at the 2004 Tony Awards. The show's format is a parody of Sesame Street, but its content involves adult-oriented themes. It has been praised for its approach to themes of racism, homosexuality and internet pornography. The musical premiered Off-Broadway in 2003 at the Vineyard Theatre, co-produced by the Vineyard Theatre and The New Group. In July of that same year, the show moved to the John Golden Theatre on Broadway, where it ran until 2009, playing for over 2,500 performances. It transferred to the off-Broadway New World Stages within weeks of ending its Broadway run, where it played until 2019; together, the two productions played 6,569 performances. Major productions have been staged in Las Vegas and the West End, and the musical has been staged and toured in several countries around the world. A school-friendly script has been produced. The principal cast includes four puppeteers and three human actors. The puppet characters, Princeton, Kate, Nicky, and others, are played by the unconcealed puppeteers as the costumed human actors interact with the puppets. Background and structure 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. The same puppet may be operated by different puppeteers in different scenes, and the actor voicing the puppet may be, at times, not the one animating it. One puppeteer sometimes voices two or more puppets simultaneously. Conversely, the so-called "live-hands" puppets require two puppeteers – again, in full view of the audience. The show draws inspiration from and imitates the format of children's educational television show Sesame Street. Marx interned at the program early in his career, and all four of the original cast's principal puppeteers – John Tartaglia, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Jennifer Barnhart and Rick Lyon – were Sesame Street performers (D'Abruzzo returned to Sesame Street after leaving Avenue Q). Three of the puppet characters are direct recognizable parodies of Sesame Street puppets: Roommates Rod and Nicky are a riff on Bert and Ernie, while Trekkie Monster bears the distinctive voice and disposition of Cookie Monster, though not his obsession with baked goods. (The production officially disclaims any connection with either Sesame Workshop or The Jim Henson Company.) All of the characters (puppet and human) are young adults who face real-world problems with uncertain solutions, as opposed to the simplistic problems and invariably happy resolutions encountered by characters on children's television programming. Much of the show's ironic humor emerges from its contrasts with Sesame Street, including the differences between innocent childhood experiences and complex adulthood. The storyline presupposes the existence of "monsters" and talking animals, and human actors sing, dance and interact with puppets, both human and non-human, as if they were sentient beings, in a light-hearted, quasi-fantasy environment. However, the characters use a considerable amount of profanity, and puppet nudity and sex are portrayed. The show addresses adult themes, such as racism, pornography, coming out, and schadenfreude. The story does not explain why three of the human characters are portrayed by human actors, while other characters intended to be perceived as humans are puppets. One human character is a fictionalized version of the real-life celebrity Gary Coleman, the juvenile actor who played Arnold Jackson in the 1980s American sitcom Diff'rent Strokes and later famously sued his parents and business advisers for stealing his earnings. Coleman is portrayed (by a woman in most productions) as an adult, who happens to be the building superintendent in the run-down Avenue Q neighborhood due to his dire financial situation. Marx and Lopez said that they originally intended to offer the Gary Coleman role to Coleman himself, and he expressed interest in accepting it, but did not show up for a meeting scheduled to discuss it. They stated that the character illustrates "one of the most important themes in Avenue Q ... that life isn't as easy as we've been led to believe". Coleman threatened to sue Avenue Q producers for their depiction of him, but ultimately he did not. When Coleman died on May 28, 2010, casts of both the Off-Broadway production in New York City and the second national tour in Dallas dedicated that evening's performances to his memory. The Coleman character remains in the show with modified dialogue. Synopsis The show is set on a fictional street in an "outer-outer borough" of New York City. Act I Princeton, a recent college graduate, is anxious to discover his purpose in life; but first, he must find an apartment and a job, with no work experience and an English degree ("What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?"). Beginning his search on Avenue A, he finally finds an affordable apartment on Avenue Q. His new neighbors are Kate Monster, a kindergarten assistant teacher; Rod, an obsessively neat Republican investment banker; Nicky, Rod's slacker roommate; Brian, an aspiring comedian recently laid off from his catering job; Christmas Eve, Brian's Japanese fiancée and a therapist with no clients; Trekkie Monster, a surly recluse who surfs the Internet all day in search of porn; and Gary Coleman, the former child actor who now serves as the apartment superintendent. Debates ensue over whose life is worst, and they conclude that it is Coleman's ("It Sucks to Be Me"). Nicky, who is straight, suspects that Rod is gay and assures Rod it is okay with him if he is, but Rod insists otherwise ("If You Were Gay"). While moving into his apartment, Princeton learns that he has been laid off from the job he had lined up. He finds a penny minted in his birth year, declaring it a sign that he will soon find his purpose in life ("Purpose"). Kate Monster dreams of starting a "Monstersori" school for young "people of fur". Princeton innocently asks Kate if she and Trekkie are related, since they are both monsters, but Kate angrily pronounces his assumption racist. Princeton, taken aback, counters that Kate's Monstersori School would discriminate against non-monsters. Gary, Brian, and Christmas Eve join them in agreeing that racism, while problematic, is an adult reality ("Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"). Princeton receives money from his parents. The Bad Idea Bears, two charming troublemakers, convince him to spend it on beer. Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Thistletwat assigns Kate to teach the next morning's ki.... Discover the Kate Brian popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Kate Brian books.