Avenue Q has three defining characteristics: a mix of actors and puppets, the raunchy mischief those puppets deliver, and the shock value of seeing fuzzy puppet friends in some very adult situations. That means puppetry – which is harder than it looks – is key to Avenue Q‘s success. When Mad Cow Theatre executive director Mitzi Maxwell hired Orlando director Juan Cantu to direct the show, she hired a director with past experience working with puppets at Disney World. Cantu, knowing how key puppetry is to Avenue Q, brought in even more experience: Michael Ziegfeld, a comedian and puppeteer who has worked with Jim Henson. Together, they trained the cast, which Cantu says he chose based on their singing and dancing skills, because he says it’s easier to teach actors puppetry than to teach puppeteers how to sing and dance and act.
Despite the emphasis on puppetry, Cantu tells Watermark that Avenue Q is a very human story which he hopes will start a conversation among those who see it.
Watermark: The show’s been around for more than a decade. Do you think it’s still timely?
Juan Canto: I think that shows that are written well like this one… through the years and through the decades, they’re just as poignant for different reasons. So this show deals with homosexuality, it deal with racism, it deals with coming-of-age. The coming-of-age story is always relevant, we always either went through it ourselves or are going through it or have kids who are going through it. And then we have the issues of homosexuality and racism, and even though that’s been around for some time, we’re still dealing with it. We’re still dealing with, for example, the transgender-bathroom law and how people view that and all the hatred and bigotry, and even though it might not be the exact same thing, we’re still dealing with the perception and the paranoia and the hatred. So, it’s still a conversation that needs to be had. And I think the racism topic, specifically, it’s very relevant due to, in recent years, stories in the media where race has been a huge topic[along with] police brutality and mistreatment and equality. I think it’s still a very relevant subject, and I think it will be for quite some time. Unfortunately, we tend to move very slow in learning to accept everyone.
Speaking of the bathroom bills and the battle for transgender rights, if the show was written today, how do you think it would handle things like that?
Well, it handles the topics as written so wonderfully. They’re very real and palpable, and it’s told in a way that we may have had those conversations with our buddies, and I think if it was written today, it would be done in a similar fashion. It would be handling that with honesty and with a sense of humor. I think when we can laugh and admit that we all have issues of hatred and acceptance; then we can start to heal and start to let go of these things that we’ve unfortunately learned.
Do you think Avenue Q’s characters would have something to say as far as what’s going on in the current presidential race?
Absolutely. In fact, there are two places in the script where the authors have allowed the director and/or producing organization to fill in the blank, so we actually do have a comment on one of our possible nominees. I don’t want to give it away, but there is some commentary on that in the show.
Ooh, exciting!What do you think your patrons are going think of these puppets and all the naughty stuff they get into?
Well, it’s hard to say what everyone’s going to think, but having seen the show myself when it was on tour and several regional productions, people are always shocked but end up having a blast. I think puppets are allowed to do things that humans might not get away with, and that’s part of the fun and charm of this show. It’s starts out feeling like it’s going to be a very “children’s show” experience, then all of a sudden you get that it’s not, but what allows it to work is that it’s a very human experience that these characters are going through and so that’s been my goal in directing it, is to make sure that even though it’s a mixture of humans and puppets telling the story, I wanted it to relate to the audience as something that we are going through or that we have gone through.
MORE INFO
Avenue Q at Mad Cow Theatre
June 3 – July 3, 2016, Thursdays – Sundays
Schedule and tickets at MadCowTheatre.com
