NOT KID STUFF PUPPETS GET SASSY AND STEAMY IN ADULT-ORIENTED SHOWS.

Byline: EVAN HENERSON

>LA.COM 

When exactly did puppets get so, well, grown up?

"Avenue Q" finishes its run at the Ahmanson Theatre this Sunday. The Jim Henson Co.'s live improvisation show "Puppet Up! Uncensored" performs monthly at the Avalon Hotel in Hollywood. Eric Sanko's Gorey-esque fantasy "The Fortune Teller" opens Thursday at UCLA's Freud Playhouse.

Forget about sing-alongs at children's birthday parties. These puppets are mad, bad, raw, frightening and decidedly un-PC. In other words, they're recognizably human.

And if there is indeed a proliferation of puppet entertainment geared toward adult audiences, well, it's about time, say the men and women with their hands up the dresses or operating the strings.

" 'Crank Yankers' and 'Team America,' thank God they broke through," says Julianne Buescher, a puppeteer in "Puppet Up! Uncensored." "Because everybody's just been dying and waiting for it."

Her reference is to the frequently raunchy Comedy Central show that has puppets getting into phone mischief, and to the 2004 action film spoof by "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

A frequent voice-over and commercial performer, Buescher gets to combine her twin loves of puppetry and improvisation in "Puppet Up!" Along the way, she has built a following for giving life to Piddles, a diapered pug puppet whose penchant for arm humping has become a YouTube favorite.

And if there's a hunger for watching adult-themed puppet entertainment, that's nothing compared to the number of actors looking to add to their creative toolbox by learning how to work puppets.

Many of the current crop of young or aspiring puppeteers confess a fascination for the art form dating back to childhood. That invariably means hours spent enchanted by Jim Henson's Muppets.

"There's just this connection with this lump of fleece and foam, those crazy eyes that just kind of sucks me in," says Christian Anderson. "I always wanted to be a puppeteer, and I got sidetracked."

Consider Anderson sidetracked no longer. After finishing the L.A. leg of the musical "Avenue Q," Anderson, the veteran of such musicals as "Rent" and "The Full Monty," returns to "Q's" Broadway company. He'll pick up his duties as puppeteer to Nicky, a slovenly slacker sharing a pad with a closeted gay Republican and libido-driven Trekkie Monster who sings a song titled "The Internet Is for Porn."

"Avenue Q," which warns children away with the red flag of "full puppet nudity," may well be a send-up of "Sesame Street," but it's a send-up born of affection. Many of the production's original cast members -- including John Tartaglia and Rick Lyon -- were longtime "Sesame Street" puppeteers.

Even the Jim Henson Co., the entity that pioneered a unique niche in children's entertainment, is vigorously exploring non-kid-friendly outlets.

Produced by the JHC's Henson Alternative branch, "Puppet Up!" was developed through a series of training classes taught by Groundlings alumnus Patrick Bristow that is designed to give puppeteers more experience in improvisation to help maintain their creative edge.

The performers took to the exercises so quickly and with such gusto that company co-CEO Brian Henson -- himself one of the performing puppeteers -- set up a showcase with invited industry executives in the audience.

The showcase was a hit, leading to invitations from the Aspen Comedy Festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Presented as a kind of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" with the puppets on the hot seat, Bristow and the eight puppeteers act out scenarios suggested by the audience. So it's puppets engaging in translation games, puppets in therapy, puppets shooting movies ... each as blue as the performer needs it to be.

There is a company and family precedent for such experimentation. After hitting big with "Sesame Street," the late Jim Henson (Brian's father) initially couldn't sell "The Muppet Show."

"All three networks in America passed on it mostly because they didn't think it would work with anyone other than kids," says Brian Henson. "It got so bad that he actually titled his second pilot 'Sex and Violence With the Muppets' to try to reorient people that, no, you can have this work for adults."

Sanko of "The Fortune Teller" developed a love of puppets from excursions to marionette shows as a child. He built marionettes as a kid, then went to art school and branched into music.

Even so, puppets "stuck in my craw," he says.

"I find them kind of magical and creepy in a beautiful way," Sanko says. "People are very willing and eager to suspend their disbelief for the sake of some little magical 2- foot-tall wooden figure, and it takes them back to childhood or to some other place."

It has been only in the last year that Sanko's puppet jones has really gone public. ("It's not so punk rock to say, 'I make dolls on the side,' " he says.) After displaying some of his marionettes with his wife, set designer Jessica Grindstaff, at a Brooklyn gallery, Sanko applied for a Jim Henson Foundation grant.

"Miraculously, I got the grant," he says. "Since I cashed the check, I thought I'd better write the story. I tried to employ everything I thought would be fun and cool and kind of dark into one package."

Evan Henerson [phone]

[e-mail]

Where to see puppets

"Puppet Up! Uncensored": 7 p.m. Oct. 20. Avalon, 1735 N. Vine St., Hollywood. Tickets: $30 to $35. [phone], www.puppetup.com.

"The Fortune Teller": Opens Thursday. 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; 5, 7 and 9 p.m. Saturday; 3, 5 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through Oct. 28. UCLA Freud Playhouse, Westwood. Tickets: $32. [phone], www.uclalive.com.

"Avenue Q": 2 and 8 p.m. today, 1 and 6 p.m. Sunday, when the run ends. Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. Tickets: $25 to $90. [phone], www.centertheatregroup.org.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Brian Henson is surrounded by the foam, felt and fake-fur stars of "Puppet Up: Uncensored," a stage show that is aimed straight at grownups.

(2 -- color) no caption (puppet)

JOHN McCOY>LA.COM