Song:It Sucks To Be Me
Album:Avenue Q: Original Broadway Cast Recording
When Robert Perez recently won a Best Song Oscar for Let It Go, I'm sure most folks didn't know anything about him. So if you want to know how he got started, you need to go back to one of the most unlikely Broadway success stories in history. At first, Lopez and partner Jeff Marx wanted to sell a Kermit The Frog as Hamlet concept to the Jim Henson Company. After it was rejected for not having enough kid appeal, the two decided to create an adult oriented parody of Sesame Street. It was called Avenue Q. Marx once interned at Sesame Street. The show is about living in the New York City neighbourhood of Avenue Q. Some of the performers were puppeteers at Sesame Street. So the presentation has puppets held by the puppeteers. They aren't hidden. And there are regular humans. Avenue Q premiered on Broadway July 2003 and ran until Sept. 2009. So it was very successful. And it won three Tony Awards in 2004 including Best Musical. It Sucks To Be Me is performed right at the start of the show. The performers include Jordan Gelber, Jennifer Barnhart, John Tartaglia, Stephanie D'Abruzzo and Ann Harada. Tartaglia, Barnhart and D'Abruzzo all were all puppeteers on Sesame Street. Tartaglia went on to create and produce Johnny and the Sprites for the Disney Channel. Barnhart worked on the show. Gelber has appeared on TV including a recurring character on Law and Order: SVU. The original cast is available on CD. The show was a launching point for Perez as he has written songs for TV shows like Scrubs and films like Frozen. And now he has an Oscar. Avenue Q is where he started. Here's the cast of Avenue Q performing It Sucks To Be Me on the 2004 Tony Awards broadcast.
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