The man behind the puppets of 'Avenue Q'

EAST ORANGE, N.J. -- Two stars of the Broadway musical "Avenue Q" await curtain time in an upstairs dressing room. One is animated and expressive, the other more reserved.\nAfter a while, meeting the quizzical, orange-eyed gaze of the first feels natural, even though he is little more than a bag of soft, brown fur trimmed with magenta ostrich feathers. Rick Lyon, the man behind the puppet, speaks for both.\nFew of Avenue Q's residents are human. As for the rest, Lyon manipulates several and designed them all.\n"It's all sort of on me," he says. "My thumbprint's all over it."\nThe charming, crass and unnervingly familiar puppets of "Avenue Q" have been good to Lyon, taking the 45-year-old puppet master from an extended off-Broadway run to his Broadway debut at the John Golden Theatre.\nTo such slyly funny tunes as "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" and "The Internet Is for Porn," the cast romps through the dilemmas facing recent college graduates everywhere: sex, love, money and finding purpose. "'Sesame Street,'" Lyon calls it, "with a couple layers of soot."\nLyon puppeteers Internet porn enthusiast Trekkie Monster, slacker Nicky and one of the cuddly Bad Idea Bears who gaily lead unsuspecting twenty-somethings down the road to ruin.\nA Broadway run called for more vivid colors along with more puppets to head off awkward, limp-limbed costume changes and Lyon and his crew had little time to make adjustments before the July 31 opening. So Lyon moved his studio to the top floor of an ivy-covered industrial building in East Orange on May 30 and took the weekend to set up before he began building puppets for his Broadway debut.\nInside the cavernous studio, tables of different heights stand beside the windows, the tallest table to accommodate Lyon's lanky frame. A radio is set to a classical station. "It's what I put on," Lyon says, "and it's what immediately gets voted off the minute we start building."\nThe special foam that gives the puppets their shape is heaped on unfinished hardwood floors. Shelves hold containers filled with fabric scraps and puppet parts.\nA confessed "scavenger," Lyon stockpiles fabric and has an attic filled with identical backrest pillows because he someday hopes to use the furry material covering them.\n"You're always looking for that stuff that sings heavenly music to you when you see it," he says.\nBefore starting a puppet, he has to know everything about it. Will it have to pick something up during the show? Will its puppeteer be left- or right-handed? How long are the puppeteer's arms?\nA puppet, says Lyon, is a "kinetic sculpture": Its success has as much to do with movement as appearance. "It's nice to have a toaster that looks good, but it's better if it makes toast," he says.\nEach puppet starts as a sketch, usually done on computer. From there, a silhouette is made from foam, covered with fabric and given hair, clothes and other details. Trekkie Monster has bags under his eyes, Lyon says, because "he spends way too much time at the computer terminal."\nAt the Golden Theatre, the "Avenue Q" puppets reside in the rafters between shows. A few prototypes remain in the studio, including the play's hero, Princeton, who is done in what Lyon calls "electric school bus orange."\n"Sometimes, the first ones you make are absolutely appalling," says Lyon. "You have to start somewhere"