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Can you tell me how to get, how to get to... anywhere.
   
Winnipeg’s District Theatre Collective presents the hit Broadway musical Avenue Q. Conceived by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, the coming-of-age tale concerns a group of young adults (mostly puppets) coming to grips with the real world — a world Sesame Street didn’t prepare them for.
   
"When you watch (shows like Sesame Street) as a kid, they teach you certain elementary lessons, and Avenue Q is the equivalent of that but for the bachelor’s-degree student," says director Connie Manfredi, 23. "It’s like, ‘OK, I have my degree and now I work at a restaurant or wherever. I don’t have any technical skills and I have this degree that doesn’t mean anything.’ The play deals with that frustration."
   
Avenue Q, which runs Feb. 2 to 5 at the Gas Station Arts Centre, is District Theatre Collective’s first production. Formed last April by Manfredi and producer Ryan Segal, the company is made up of recent graduates of the theatre, English and music programs at the University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg. While the cast and crew aren’t strangers to putting on plays, they weren’t exactly puppet masters before the Avenue Q process began.
   
"It’s a challenge because none of us have had any puppeteering training before, so it was a new skill for everyone to learn," Manfredi says. "Tim and Becca Bandfield, friends of ours that we’ve worked with before, they are really fantastic puppeteers in the city, and they came on board to teach everyone and direct that side of the play. If the puppeteering isn’t good, then the show’s crap, so we wanted to make sure we had a really good grasp on it."
   
District Theatre Collective has been working with the puppets — which were rented from a company in Philadelphia — since September. Here’s hoping its members have got their puppetry perfected, because in Avenue Q, the puppeteers are just as visible as the puppets.
   
"They’re not hiding behind anything or covered in black, so you get to watch them using the puppets," says Segal, 22. "It’s interesting to see them acting at the same time the puppets are acting."
   
"On children’s shows, there’s the illusion that the puppets are real and Avenue Q breaks down those illusions," Manfredi adds. "It’s not only a technical illusion, but the illusion of life, the illusion that these shows say you can be anything, but then you’re 25 years old and you realize that’s not the case. It’s not make-believe. These characters are human so therefore, you see the humans behind them."
   
You’ll see a helluva lot more than that. Avenue Q features full-on puppet nudity — and even puppet sex.
   
"It’s not just for the sake of it, though,"  Manfredi says. "The puppet sex comes out of a beautiful moment but then gets really real, really quick. There’s still a story going on, just at one point the puppets get it on."
 

Avenue Q
District Theatre Collective
Feb. 2 - 5, 8 p.m.; Feb. 4 - 5, 2 p.m.
Gas Station Arts Centre