ABSTRACT
Often described as adult Sesame Street, Avenue Q depicts college grad Princeton as he moves to a working-class neighborhood in New York and learns how to become an adult. For a show that touts itself as breaking the rules through its open discussion of racism, sex, and schadenfreude, Avenue Q has found remarkable mainstream resonance. Racialization for characters in the musical is accomplished through various factors including the nature and behavior of each character, the way the character is performed, and the physical appearance of the puppets and the bodies of the performers and puppeteers. Accounting for each of these elements reveals that Avenue Q constructs a tight linkage between traditional biological markers of race and the production of raced characters. The major feature that defines the relations between characters in Avenue Q is the neighborhood in which they live. That the musical is named after their block makes it evident that it’s central to the conceit of the show.
