Rick Lyon to Exit Avenue Q on July 3

After nearly two years and close to 800 performances, Rick Lyon, the originator of the characters Nicky and Trekkie Monster, and the designer and creator of all the puppets for AVENUE Q, will play his last performance on Broadway July 3. Lyon's final show will be 7pm that Sunday.

In a statement, Lyon said: "I think it's fair to say that I am THE original cast member," says Lyon. "I met Bobby (Lopez) and Jeff (Marx), the composer/lyricists of AVENUE Q, when I did a BMI workshop demo of one of their songs for their spec musical KERMIT, PRINCE OF DENMARK. That was in 1999, and I think I was the first professional puppeteer they ever met."

Based on the success of their KERMIT project, for which they won the Kleban Award, Lopez and Marx decided to create a piece for their own puppet characters, using Rick's expertise. That became AVENUE Q.

Rick recalls, "The first puppets we used were ones I pulled from my stock and re-purposed to be Nicky and Rod. Then I built a Kate Monster, a Princeton, and a Trekkie Monster. Later we used some teddy bear puppets I had for the Bad Idea Bears, and eventually added Lucy."

"The puppets have changed so much - I see early tapes of readings we did and I shudder! I'm so proud of the way they look now, and it's so incredible to go out on stage every night and perform and be surrounded with these things I've created."

Lyon's company The Lyon Puppets is currently building the puppets for the Las Vegas production of AVENUE Q, slated to open at the new Wynn resort on Labor Day weekend.

"Yeah, I'm at the workshop all day," says Lyon, "or running around shopping for materials, then doing the show every night. And we've had a bunch of extra appearances for Q lately, so it's been pretty brutal - I don't sleep much."

When asked if he will be joining his creations in the new Vegas production, Lyon answers, "I don't know. We've talked about it. The only sure thing is that my replacement has already been hired for Broadway, and come July 3, I'm done there."

"I will miss the Broadway community," Lyon says. "It's a remarkably kind and welcoming family, really. You have to know that people like Harvey Fierstein, Sutton Foster, they could be making so much more money doing TV or film. But they're here because they love it, because they believe in the power of live theatre. And that's how most of the actors are."

"I am SUCH an unlikely guy to end up in a Broadway musical – I am NOT the type of person people expect to see onstage, and for the last 17 years I've strictly been a puppeteer. But the community of actors has been so accepting and generous to me – it's meant so much, I hope I can maintain some of those ties."