Stephanie's Purpose

The Malcontent was all a-twitter to hear that our friend, 2004 Tony nominee Stephanie D'Abruzzo, has signed up [reg. req.] to continue with the cast of Avenue Q on Broadway, after a run of more than 800 shows so far.  (We are also debating whether to continue using this haughty first-person-plural way of referring to ourselves.)

Stephanie on life on Avenue Q:

[S]o many people still see me as only a puppeteer. People have actually asked me, "Can you sing without the puppet?" I can't take myself too seriously. I walk out the stage door that shares a service entrance with the Milford Plaza. So I leave the theater every night surrounded by garbage or laundry or mattresses.

Perhaps it is not an irony that one of our first and most indelible memories of Stephanie was weeping together with her the day Jim Henson died.  For one who was practically a citizen of Sesame Street, it was a very sad day indeed, as if a family member had died.  It was also the first and only time The Malcontent has wept at the death of a celebrity, although we do recall getting a good lump in our throat over the passing of Fred Rogers.

Stephanie always was the frenetic, highly creative kind.  We thought her life would take either a downward or a very sharply upward trajectory, but probably not anything in between.  We are glad to see that it was the latter, and even happier that she has apparently found her purpose.