Puppets, porn, profanity

This theater season, the IU Auditorium has hosted Grammy Award-winning performers, Tony Award-winning performances, world-renowned speakers and everything in between.

Tonight, the auditorium will round out its season with a bunch of puppets.

Avenue Q, the musical about life in New York City, will open its two-night run at 8 p.m. The show, which tells the story of Princeton, a recent college graduate trying to succeed, uses a cast of both human actors and puppets.

“It’s told by a cast of people and puppets together, trying to find their way,” said Maria Talbert, events coordinator for the auditorium. “It’s touching and meaningful in that way, but at the same time utterly hilarious. It’s one that a lot of people have been waiting to come here for a long time.”

While Avenue Q certainly invokes any number of children’s shows — the producers credit “Sesame Street” as inspiration — the show is not recommended for young audiences. It covers mature topics like homosexuality, pornography and profanity.
However, Talbert said expressing these topics with puppets will resonate with audiences raised on shows such as “Sesame Street.”

“It deals a lot with things that people in their 20s deal with in a very frank way,” Talbert said. “So it’s not ‘Sesame Street,’ and the producers made sure to express that. But it makes it that much more endearing for people who grew up watching those shows. There’s a connection with those puppets that you’re automatically going to have having seen those shows.”

Talbert said tickets are going fast, but some are still available at the box office. Student prices start at $19 for balcony seats.

“If students have time in between studying for their finals, they should really make an effort to come out and see it,” she said. “They definitely will not regret it.”