Broadway Bullet Interview: Jennifer Barnhart of Avenue Q

 We talk to Jennifer Barnhart of the original cast of "Avenue Q" and she tells us about the show and how she got involved with it. Also, we play two songs from the show "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" and "I Wish I Could Go Back to College."

Jennifer made her Broadway debut in "Avenue Q." Off Broadway she has appeared in "Angels in America," "Twelfth Night," and "Rumors." She has appeared on TV in "Sesame Street," "The Big Blue House," and "Book of Pooh." She received her BFA from the University of Connecticut in acting with a concentration in puppetry.

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You can listen to this interview and many other great features for free on Broadway Bullet vol. 107. Subscribe for free so you don't miss an episode.

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Broadway Bullet Interview: Jennifer Barnhart of Avenue Q 

Broadway Bullet: Avenue Q (http://www.avenueq.com/) that puppet musical which was the surprise Tony winner a couple years back just past its 1500^th performance and we have original cast member, the only original cast member left with the production, Jennifer Barnhart has been with the show, what did we say about 85 percent of the performances?

Jennifer Barnhart: Something like that, yeah. To the best of my recollection.

BB: …Is here to chat with us about the show, its history, its longevity. You'll finally be able to hear those blue tracks that they can't play on the network.

JB: Yes. It's very exciting.

BB: First off, you actually studied puppeteering.

JB:  Yes I did. I studied puppetry at the University of Connecticut. Which is currently still I believe the only University in the country that offers accredited degree programs both undergraduate and graduate level in puppetry. Now there are other puppetry programs sprouting up around the country in different University programs and that's great. But that was where I studied. And it's a 30 year old program at least.

BB: So did you tell your parents, "Don't worry. I'm going to be in the first Broadway play to run puppetry, and to be working 4 years steady"?

JB: Well it's kind of funny. My folks fairly understanding because my brother sort of blazed the trail for me. He was the first performer in the family. I have a brother 5 years older than me. His name is Jeff Barnhart. Check him out on itunes.com. He is a ragtime piano player, which is sort of very specialty niche kind of area of performing music. And he started doing that, and he's been playing professionally since he was 15. So my folks saw that, and I was an up and coming actress, and they were like, "Well ok. It seemed to work out for your brother. Let's hope it works out for you." It wasn't until I got to college I found this outlet to do this thing I've always wanted to do since I was a little kid, which was puppetry. So at first my family was like, "Uh, ok. Fine". But on the other hand, in New York I'm a tall blonde deep voiced actress. I am one of 200 thousand of me in this city. But because, and I wish that this was tv so you could see that I'm lip-syncing with my hand, because I do this, because I'm a puppeteer, that is a point of difference for me and it's how I've been able to make my living as a performer.

BB: Are you the only cast member currently that has studied puppeteering?

JB: Formally, yes. Also I suppose I should cover all the bases here. I'm the last original principal cast member. We do have 2 understudies who are also original company members. Aymee Garcia and Carmen Ruby Floyd. And they're fabulous. But I'm the last, as I like to call it, native speaker of puppetry. I actually got to do some of the puppet captaining and some of the teaching for some of the audition process.

BB: That's what I was wondering if you get called on a lot.

JB: Sometimes. I was for a while. And it's certainly more like learning by osmosis just by the fact of being able to work along side people. You learn from them in that way. But I was coaching and teaching what I call, 'puppet camp' which was the final round of callbacks. And I would say, "Hi. My name is Jennifer. I perform in Avenue Q. Performing in Avenue Q with puppets is a lot like performing in a foreign language. I am a native speaker. The people who are in the show now are conversationally fluent and in the end of these 2 days of working together I hope you can say 'Hello, my name is where's the bathroom.' That's all I need you to say. As long as you can communicate an idea. That's the thing that's going to distinguish if you can take this and run with it." And it takes probably about 6 months to become conversationally fluent. I mean kids are thrust out on that stage with puppets in their hands with very little time and they have to catch up very very fast. But it's really fun. Especially since I've been with the show so long. It's been fun to watch the progression and development of all the other actors in the show and their abilities with puppetry.

BB: There are 3 actors that don't use puppets in the show, but I think it's clear the puppeteers have the most fun in the show.

JB: Which is also because you get to play more than one character too which is also part of the fun. And it's a bit like walking and chewing gum and juggling and riding a unicycle all at the same time. It's definitely fun and challenging in that way.

BB: This is actually the first time I saw the show. All this time my girlfriend had resisted. I want to get this out if other people have the same resistance. My girlfriend thought that the idea of puppets onstage was going to be creepy. And you won her over. She was amazed that she could watch the puppets and the actors. And the actors were still giving that expression. And It was interesting to watch both and she really actually enjoyed it. And quite frankly the story makes sense to be sold with puppets.

JB: Absolutely. There's a lot of lines and words in the songs that you can't say. I mean you can say them. But having a puppet on gives you the ability and the freedom to say things you otherwise would not be able to say.

BB: This sounds like a segue way to the first song you're going to play. 

JB: It does. And I was walking down the street learning, trying to learn the words to "Everyone's a little bit racist" and if you're singing that down the street people are going to look at you funny. And I did get a few looks. But when you have a puppet on your hand you can sing things like that and nobody minds. It's somehow becomes acceptable. It breaks the taboo of it. 2 of our characters Princeton and Kate monster are having a little flirtation at the beginning of the play. And Princeton is inquiring things about Kate being a monster, because she's a monster activist. She wants to develop a school for monsters. So he wants to get to know her a little bit, get to know her lifestyle and what that's like since that's foreign to him. So he asks her. "So you're a monster. And there's Trekkie Monster and he's a monster. So Kate monster and Trekkie Monster. Are you 2 related?" And she's completely affronted by that. "What? Princeton I'm surprised at you." And they examine what the nature of being racist is because she says, "I find that to be a racist statement." And he says "Well you want to open a school for monsters" and she says "yes" and he says "Can someone like me go to your school?" "Well no. We don't want people like you there." And he goes, "Yeah ok. Shoe's on the other foot."

Listen to "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist in Vol. 107 of Broadway Bullet.  

BB: Now you do a lot of support work. In fact you're one of the only 2 people that does this thing where there's 2 people operating 1 puppet.

JB: Right. And it's sort of if you're referencing the children's television genre, you've got Sesame Street, you've got all these other shows, and you have sort of the archetype of an Ernie and Bert kind of pairing, it's similar to a Nicky and Rod kind of pairing in that archetype. You've got one of them that is a rod puppet, which means his arms are on little sticks. And you've got Ernie which is a live hands or a glove puppet. So that means you actually put your hands inside a glove and that allows for a much greater form of expressivity and expression with the puppet. And that requires a second person. One thing you don't think about when you're watching it on television because you think, 'He's got a mouth and he's got 2 hands, fine." Well if one person is doing the mouth and one hand, well that leaves an empty glove and that's where I come in. It was just a means of showing another style of puppetry. And when you asked about the puppetry and your girlfriend being a little creeped out by it, and saying she enjoyed watching the puppets and the puppeteers, that was kind of a happy accident while the show was being developed. Originally the show was being pitched as a prime time show for television. So the writers were trying to get tv producers to come to readings. So there are the puppeteers with their scripts on their music stands and they're doing what any other reading would do. They've got their scripts…

BB: I wish the listeners could see this for a moment. Because she's got the most expressive hands. They're just going constantly. Constantly. She's definitely a puppeteer. So just imagine the most gesticulating aunt or sister that you ever had.

JB: Thank you. So they're doing the reading and the puppets are sitting across from each other. And the feedback they got from these readings they gave 2 comments to the creators every time, almost in the same order. Always: I love the music. The music is brilliant. And the second comment was always: I loved watching the puppeteer do their job. Now that was something the creators had not really factored in. At first they were thinking, 'ok we're going to have to hide the puppeteers if we're going to do this as a theatrical venue. We're going too have to build the set with holes in the floor to hide the puppeteers'. But it became apparent that was something people actually enjoyed about the process. And also because the puppets are very simple, they don't have a lot of eye mechanisms or anything like that, there's only so much you can do with the puppet a far as expression. When you do it to a camera you have a single point of view, we're performing to you. But when you're doing it in a theatre you have 800 points of view that you have to make it read for. So our faces and our expression acts as a subtle interpreter for what's happening. Because with a camera I can turn my head ever so slightly with a puppet and it displays a world of sadness or being pensive or any other thing. But here you have to have a little bit of guidance from the puppeteers body and the puppeteers face. As Rick Lyon, (http://www.avenueq.com/lyon.html)  the original Nicky/Trekkie and the designer of the puppets themselves for the show, he once had a really good way of putting it. " Watching the first 5 minutes of Avenue q is like watching the first 5 minutes of a foreign film with subtitles. Because you're very aware of looking up and down and up and down and up and down and reading the subtitles and then looking back up at the action. And after the first 5 minutes it just becomes part of the storytelling and it's seamless and you don't really notice it anymore." And I thought that was a really good metaphor to describe what it's like to go 'Here's a world where people are walking around with puppets on their arms. What do I make of this? Ok. Let me see.' Some people say they just look at the puppets. Some people say they just look at the puppeteers. But most people say they get a balanced performance from watching both.    

BB: To a lot of people Avenue Q is groundbreaking. A lot of people credit it for breaking the barrier for smaller shows, quirkier shows to really have room on Broadway. It's unlikely the producers would've put Spelling Bee on Broadway without the success of Avenue Q.

JB: Interesting. Yeah, I can see that. And it's funny. I was actually at the talkback recently and Jeff Marx (http://www.avenueq.com/lopez.html)  one of the composers for the show was there, and somebody said, "What is it like? Did you feel disappointed when it wasn't going to be a tv series?" And he said, "When you do these readings and a producer comes up to you and says,' have you thought about doing it as a theatre piece because if you did, I think I'd be interested in it.' And if a producer says 'I'd be interested in it' you say 'yes. It can be a theatre piece. That's just great." So what I think really helped the show was it had a long development process. They did a bunch of different readings. I saw it in one of its earliest readings in the York theatre and thought "Oh my God. This is brilliant. I hope this goes somewhere. It's just genius." I had no idea then that I was going to go with it. 

BB: At that point how hard were you campaigning to get in it with your background in puppeteering?

JB: It's funny. Because all of the house people were puppeteers and people who worked on Sesame Street (http://www.sesameworkshop.org/) , and all of the people onstage were people that I knew. And I just thought, "Boy I hope they expand the cast. I'd love to be a part of this." And it turned out that I was fortunate enough to do so. So it went from there to the Eugene O'Neill theatre conference and they learned a lot about structure and how to make it work, and there was a lot of back and forth about the book writer. And the book writer, this is kind of funny, the book writer for our opening night gift off-Broadway, gave us a collection called "I Have Never Lane With a Man" And that was a deleted line of Mrs. Thistletwats from an earlier version of the script. And he gave us all of the deleted scenes. And it was 126 pages. That's how much this show was worked on and revised and changed. They had so many different ideas about it, and I think it really shows because they did have a lot of "How do we work this out? How do we make this work? How do we make this work?" And I think it really helped the show in the long run.

BB: Let's maybe go into one more song from the show before we continue. This one is called, "I Wish I Could Go Back To College".

JB: It's so universal. All of the characters are facing troubling times and having a bit of existential crisis and it's a lot of why the show was written. The writers talked about how when you're a kid and you watch children's television and you learn, 'you're special' and 'dream big' 'you can be whatever you want to be' and 'everything's going to be waiting for you'. And you go to college and you graduate from college, and you move back home with your folks and you temp. And you go, "Well, wait a minute. Where's the magic bullet here. I was supposed to be something else. So the song is very much about a return to that feeling of safety before you become disillusioned. Before you grow up a little bit. Before you lose a little bit of that innocence.

Listen to "I Wish I Could Go Back to College" in Vol. 107 of Broadway Bullet. 

JB: Now that you've heard the song In wanted to share this story with you which is so funny because often times since it's a show with puppets in it, we have people bringing their kids which is always kind of funny. I look at the parents and go, "Oh I hope they're precocious."  And sometimes they want to have their little programs autographed. So I try to ask them questions, and I asked this young girl who's probably about 20 years old," What was your favorite song" And she said the song about wanting to go back to college. I said, "Excuse me for asking, but how old are you?" And she said,"10". I said, "Why is that your favorite song?" And she said," Because I wish I could go back to kindergarten. We didn't have homework. We got to have playtime all the time." And I thought, 'ok this song is so universal that here is this 10 year old putting it in a relevant context that she can relate to.'

BB: That is great. We've talked a lot about Avenue Q rightfully, but we've got to do a little talking about you here. Because somewhere in the middle of your 12, 1300 or so performances of Avenue Q give or take, you're still doing work with Sesame Street and some other things as well. So let's talk a little bit about some of the other exciting avenues you've been pursing.

JB: Avenues as it were. Very nice. Actually I just returned from a 3 week hiatus from Avenue Q where I was just down in Mississippi shooting a show called, "Between the Lions" (http://pbskids.org/lions/). It's a show for PBS. And it's about a family of Lions who live in and run a public library. And the show teaches kids how to read. And I play the Mama Lioness of it. And it is rather my first love. It is a show I adore doing largely because I believe in what it's trying to do. It's really helping out a lot. One of the reasons we are shooting in Mississippi is that they have an early literacy problem down there that our show has been helping to remedy so I feel very proud of that work. And it was also the show that enabled me to leave the desk job. That was the show that started me making my living as a performer. So it is very near and dear to my heart. And another project that I just was working on recently was, "Johnny and the Sprites" (http://adisney.go.com/disneychannel/playhouse/johnny/). Which is a show for the Disney Channel and it stars John Tartaglia who was the original Princeton off-Broadway and Broadway. And he is on camera as a human so he's interacting with puppet characters and the show is very fun. There is a lot of great music. There's a lot of Broadway composers working on it. Mark Hollmann and Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker and Marcy, Zena. It was so great to have this Broadway community of composers writing for this show for Disney. Because in a lot of children's shows sometimes songs can just be stuck in. But because we had people who wrote with a musical theatre sensibility the songs were driving the narrative. So that made the show particularly fun to work on. So I was one of the puppeteers on that as well. And it was great to work with John. And also another human character on the show is Natalie Venetia Belcon who was the original Gary Coleman. So she's a human on the show.

BB: Let me explain.  There's actually a character is Gary Coleman on the show. So passing it's 1500 performances. How many do you think you've got in you?

JB: Me? Bring it on. As long as they'll have me I'm happy to be there.

BB: You look thrilled. It's always interesting. Certain actors, stage is a different beast. Even actors who loved the stage doing community theatre when they grew up, find doing a 2 weekend run on their Ohio stage verses, 8 shows a week, week after week after week. It's interesting to see different people take the whole thing. You still seem to be having a ball onstage.

JB: I am. Frankly I'm kind of amazed by that fact. I didn't think this was something I necessarily would find, and I'm not saying I find it easy because I mean no performer will tell you that it's easy. It's always a challenging schedule. And I think some of the hardest things are things like, I've missed 6 weddings. I've missed a bunch of personal things that you can never seem to get the time off for. That's really sort of the hardest part about it. This is the longest gig I've ever had. I feel so blessed to have this gift. The show is a good show too. It'd be one thing if it was just a hit. But it's a hit and it's a good show. And I'm very proud of my work in it. And I'm proud of everyone's work in it. And because there's been some cast changes, I mean every time there's a new cast member it's a whole new show. Because it's only 7 onstage principals so the whole energy of the thing changes. So it keeps growing for me and I feel very fortunate. But also for what I do it's so much about the relationship with my partner, with my dance partner. And I've had 3 fulltime Nicky/Trekkie's now. And I've had 9 or 10 total if you include understudies and vacation swings. So that's a whole different thing all together. Rick jokingly referred to us as the 'Fred and Ginger of Puppetry' when we first started working together. And it is a dance partnership. I've got my hand on the small of his back and I'm along for the ride. It's very fun. I find it very gratifying.

BB: Well thank you very much for coming down and talking to our listeners about the show.

JB: Thank you so much for having me, Michael.

BB: We're going to bring this out with another snid-bit of another song. I'm not even going to say the title because they're going to get it very quickly. Thanks for coming down.

JB: Thanks for having me, Michael. 

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You can listen to this interview and many other great features for free on Broadway Bullet vol. 107. Subscribe for free so you don't miss an episode.

 or MP3 Feed with XML