As the show’s stage manager since its tryout run at the Vineyard Theater in February 2003, Christine M. Daly has wrangled puppets and performances, protected the director’s initial vision, and made sure everything has run smoothly, on and offstage.
After a raucously applauded final performance at New World Stages, Daly talked about 16 years on “Avenue Q.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Q: How are you feeling right now?
A: I cried a little during the show. But I don’t think I’ll process it until I’ve been away for more than a week and I realize I’m not coming back from vacation.
I’m a little bit relieved, too, because the whole thing is done. We got through it and everything went well. And I’m a little bit anxious about what comes next.
Q: Back in 2003, did you have any sense of how long you might work on the show?
A: They had to talk me into doing it! The Vineyard Theater asked me three times because I had told them they didn’t pay well enough and I needed to make a living. I eventually said yes when they told me that Broadway producers were involved.
We kind of knew, as long as things went well, that we would shift to Broadway. We knew we were a good show. But even then we were “the little puppet show.” Everybody was saying, “Oh, in six months we’ll be gone.”
But the audiences took to it. The opening night on Broadway was amazing. It was 800 people and they loved us, and all of a sudden it was just that huge wave of sound and support. They were looking for something that was saying what we were saying, that opened conversations, that was promoting acceptance. Many, many nights it felt like a rock concert.
Q: It felt pretty boisterous tonight, too.
A: It felt like falling back into old rhythms. Maybe it was less comfortable for some of the people onstage.
Q: Tell us about the particular responsibilities of looking after a cast made of foam and felt.
A: They get zhuzhed every show. Their hair is constantly being done. Kate has a human hair wig that has to be styled. Rod has a glue mix in his hair that has to be redone once in a while.
On a daily basis, you’ll often use an eraser on the whites of their eyes. And you want to make sure that the actual pupils aren’t getting scuffed at all because they won’t be as bright to the audience.
Q: Anything to combat the smelliness that presumably creeps in?
A: There’s a spray that we use, but there’s not a lot you can do about it. You cannot wash their insides. That’s the hard part. We are probably the biggest users of Purell in the Northern Hemisphere.
Q: I obviously have to ask you what the puppets get up to backstage.
A: Oh God, what am I allowed to say?
Well, I can say that there have been so many moments when a person who was down would have a puppet come up behind them and just give them a hug.
But puppets can say things humans cannot. (Laughs.) There’s new harassment rules now that weren’t in place way back when we started.
Q: After all of these performances, were there any memorable mishaps?
A: There was the show where we lost all the lights, apart from three spotlights. And the show where part of the ceiling of the Golden Theater fell in. We didn’t stop. The show is so good you could do it in a black box with work lights.
Q: Were there moments that you looked forward to in the show?
A: It shifts as time goes by. I feel like when we started the show, “I Wish I Could Go Back to College” was my thing. When we moved here (to New World Stages in 2009), and I was pregnant with my daughter, “Purpose” — the whole number just spoke to me.
At the very end of the show, when Princeton is alone on stage and he says, “Everything in life is only for now” — that is just brilliant. I just love it. That moment makes me very happy. And it has felt pretty, pretty perfect for some time now.
Q: Your daughter is not an appropriate age to watch the show, is she?
A: Emily came to the show the first time when she was six weeks old. She knows every word. She’s convinced “porn” is short for “popcorn.” (Laughs guiltily.) When she’s older she’ll hate me.
Q: Any memorable audience interactions?
A: We have lots of super fans who totally love the show. We had someone who came dressed as Lucy the Slut, including full pink face, the other day.
We have lots of kids on the spectrum, and kids on the spectrum who have become adults, who love the show for the lessons it teaches. It has resonated with that group of people in a different way than it resonates with everyone else. But I think we all need puppets to tell us what to do.
Q: What will you miss the most?
A: The feeling that if you work on this show for 2.3 seconds, you are part of the family.
I’m a single mom, and it’s a hard business for parents being separated from their kids so much. So it was great to have a place where everybody understood that if you needed to bring your child to work that day, you brought your child to work. There was an understanding that we’re all working together to tell this story that teaches these lessons, and you can’t do that if you’re worried about what’s happening at home.
I mean, every show becomes some sort of a family. But this felt deeper than that.
Q: You’re including the puppets in that?
A: Absolutely. I will miss every single one of them.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.