Arts & Entertainment

Find Your Way
To Avenue Q

Actors and giant puppets deliver words and music
of U-M grad in opening play of Fisher season.

Photo by Carol Rosegg

Naomi Pfefferman

Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.

eff Marx, co-creator of the hit
puppet musical Avenue Q, was
fired from his internship at
Sesame Street in 1998. Back then he was an
attorney, but he had taken the position in
order to segue into songwriting for kids.
"Instead, I was cleaning tables, taking
out the garbage, Xeroxing and answering
telephones," Marx says. "When I faxed an
executive a song I had written, he told
me that I was being too aggressive, that
my job was to observe and to distribute
scripts, and who they hell did I think I
was? He got me the [heck] out of there,
and I felt totally pathetic:'
Marx channeled his pathos into Avenue
Q, which he penned with Robert Lopez,
another unemployed, frustrated 20-some-
thing. The subversive musical, which
opens at the Fisher Theatre on Nov. 5,
wasn't meant as revenge against Sesame
Street, Marx says, but as a primer for
youths who find the real world scarier
than it appears on children's TV.
The fictional Avenue Q is a dilapidated
street in an outer borough of New York,
where broke college graduates can afford
the rent. The residents include puppets
such as Princeton, a preppie searching for
his "purpose" in life; Kate Monster, an assis-
tant teacher who longs to found her own
"Monstersori" school; Lucy T. Slut, a skanky
chanteuse; and Trekkie Monster, the local
pervert. Rod, a closeted homosexual, is in
love with his slacker roommate, Nicky — a
riff on all those homoerotic musings about
Sesame Street's Ernie and Bert.
Among the humans is a character named
Gary Coleman (yes, like the '80s sitcom
Diff'rent Strokes) who "is like the patron
saint of being great when you're a kid, but
sucking when you get older;' Marx says.
The musical is "how Friends might be if
it had Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggy arguing
about their one-night stand but with more
angst, expletives and full-on puppet sex:'
the Times of London said.
Marx, now 36, seems light years from the
fictional Avenue Q. He moved from Manhattan
to L.A., has been taking Hollywood meet-

till

Avenue Q co-creators Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez

ings and even had breakfast with Stephen
Schwartz, the composer-lyricist of Wicked,
which Avenue Q beat out, in an upset, for
best musical at the 2004 Tony Awards (pick-
ing up a statuette was co-producer Jeffrey
Seller, an Oak Park native who, like Marx, is a
graduate of the U-M theater department).
Marx says he now has a "Bel-Air shrink"
— and that he has "plenty to be neurotic
about" because he is Jewish.
Marx's love of musicals comes from his
Jewish mother, a dental hygienist who rou-
tinely shlepped her four children to shows
such as The Sound of Music and The King
and I. "My bar mitzvah theme was 'Hooray
for Jeffrey and Hooray for Hollywood
Musicals," says Marx, who was raised in
Hollywood, Fla.
By that time, he was already a profes-
sional singer, crooning ballads to blushing
girls with a local music teacher's Number
One Bar Mitzvah Band. After each gig, the
girls would chase Marx and ask for his
autograph.
He had a very different experience in
the musical theater department at the
University of Michigan, where he received
"only one bit part in one show, which had
one line," he says. "I had professors tell me
that I had no talent and that I would never
make it in theater."
So Marx attended Yeshiva University's
law school and passed the bar, but discov-
ered he didn't particularly like the profes-

Kate Monster, Anika Larsen, Princeton and Robert McClure in Avenue Q,
a musical comedy about young adults finding their way in New York City.

sion. At age 28, he found himself adrift, liv-
ing in an apartment owned by his parents
and interning for various shows and pro-
ducers in the hopes of switching careers.
He also considered becoming an entertain-
ment lawyer and enrolled in a musical
theater workshop just to meet potential
clients. It was there he discovered he had
talent for songwriting and teamed up with
Lopez, a Yale graduate who was still living
with his parents, to write a show.
"We decided we wanted to write a musi-
cal for people our age, that even straight
guys would want to see says Marx, who is
gay. "We decided to use puppets because
they don't look cheesy when they burst
into song:"
Marx and Lopez came up with a musi-
cal titled Kermit, Prince of Denmark,
which they submitted to the Jim Henson
Company. When the company passed, Marx
recalls, "Bobby and I beat our heads against
the wall and said, `Why did we spend an
entire year writing for someone else's
characters? Let's create our own Muppets.
... And screw trying to come up with some
crazy imaginary world; let's make it about
our world.' Everyone we knew was intern-
ing and assisting and floundering and
struggling. And we thought, this is awful;
but it's also kind of funny:'
Avenue Q's first two songs sum up those
sentiments: "What Do You Do With a B.A.
in English" and "It Sucks to Be Me."

Marx and Lopez penned their ditties
in restaurants, Starbucks, on the subway
— anywhere people and surroundings
could inspire them. "We wrote 'There's Life
Outside Your Apartment' literally, while
walking down the street:' Marx says. "Of
course, we didn't write 'The Internet Is for
Porn while watching porn," he adds. "That
was in a diner over fries:'
"Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" was
inspired, in part, by a relative of Marx's
who refers to African Americans using a
derogatory Yiddish word for blacks. At the
end of the scene, the characters argue over
whether Jesus was black or white.
"But everyone laughs when they finally
realize Jesus was Jewish:' Marx says. ❑

Avenue Q runs Nov. 5-23 at the
Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd.,
in Detroit. Show times are 8 p.m.
Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m.
Saturdays and 2 and 7:30 p.m.
Sundays (no evening performance
on Nov. 23). There will be an addi-
tional matinee 1 p.m. Thursday, Nov.
6. $32-$77. (248) 645-6666 or
www.ticketmaster.com . Due to adult
situations (like full-puppet nudity),
Avenue Q may be inappropriate for
kids under 13. For additional infor-
mation, call (313) 872-1000 or visit
www.BroadwaylnDetroit.com .

October 23 • 2008

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