News You Can Bruise for 2006 August 3

Sumana went with coworkers to see Avenue Q. I'd been looking forward to seeing Avenue Q as well, because it looked like someone had finally done a musical that really explored the symbiotic relationship between Muppet and puppeteer. But much of my interest was crushed when Sumana revealed that the puppeteers are not characters in the musical! Any more than they are on brand-name Muppet shows. The only human characters are the ones who aren't operating Muppets.

The puppeteers are visible, they walk around the stage and they emote along with their Muppets, but in the fiction of the show they're supposed to not exist? Or they're supposed to be the insensate bodies of the Muppet characters? I dunno how it's supposed to work. How do Muppet operators see their Muppets? I always thought it was like the relationship between ventriloquist and dummy.