“Avenue Q” is a musical about a bunch of characters in their 20s dealing with all of the challenges of post-college life.

For an ensemble known as the Millennial Theatre Company, “I don’t think the message could be more on brand for us,” director and music director Joe Asente said.

Despite the obvious fit, Asente initially was resistant to doing the musical, which starts a two-weekend run on Friday at Youngstown’s Hopewell Theatre.

First off, there was the puppet element. Nearly all of the actors in “Avenue Q” also have to be puppeteers, providing the voices and movements for puppet characters who may remind audiences of the ones who inhabit a certain street that has educated and entertained generations of preschoolers for more than 50 years.

“It’s an adult version of ‘Sesame Street,'” Asente said. “It takes all the life lessons learned as kids with the same children’s TV format and presents adult life lessons through the same lens.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Asente thought the show was one that MTC could do as a virtual production online, but the rights holders would not release the show for online presentation.

“Doing that got the ball rolling,” Asente said. “A lot of our folks got interested in doing the show.”

During MTC’s production of “The Rocky Horror Show,” Asente learned Lynn Ohle, who played Janet, had started a puppet-making business called Out of Hand Puppets.

“I’ve always been involved in community theater and prop building in particular,” Ohle said. “When everything pivoted to online, I was doing a trivia show using puppetry to entertain. I started to build custom puppets rather than buying things that were too heavy for my purposes. I come from a family of makers.”

With a local source to get puppets from, Asente thought “Avenue Q” might be the perfect show for the winter slot on the theater’s schedule. Asente had to work around some COVID-19 illnesses with last winter’s production of “Heathers the Musical.” Since most of the actors are operating puppets who are the main characters, it’s a show the actors could perform while wearing masks if necessary.

Ohle, who now lives in Albany, N.Y., worked with actors online to help them get comfortable with operating the puppets. Asente worked them to remind them they were actors.

“This was the hardest rehearsal process I’ve ever been through,” he said. “After ‘Into the Woods,’ I thought we could do anything. This humbled me a little bit. Doing this show, we basically had to reteach everyone how to act on stage. Once you put a puppet in their hands, everyone forgets how to act like normal people on stage.

“It was frustrating. It was like trying to teach a youth theater acting 101 class. Everyone knew what they were doing, but they didn’t know how to do it with this new thing you’ve put in their hands. Having someone like Lynn come in and teach everyone how to use their puppets, having someone with that expertise in puppetry really helped with this show.”

The cast features Ryan Lamb, Sarahh Kinser, Ben Doss, Bernadette Lim, Ryan Stewart, Grayson McCrory, George Maillis, Brianna Rae Quinn, Ty Hanes, Tyler Stouffer, Gene Metro, Marissa Snyder, Daniel Chiaberta and Briana Wagner-Matijevic.

Despite the puppets and the involvement of Robert Lopez, who also wrote the songs for “Avenue Q” as well as “Frozen,” no one should mistake “Avenue Q” for a children’s show.

Some of those song titles include “The Internet Is for Porn,” “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” “I’m Not Wearing Underwear Today” and “You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You’re Making Love).”

“I think all of the songs are hilarious,” Asente said. “This is one of the only shows I’ve directed where seven weeks into the process, everything still is funny to me, which speaks to the score and the book.”

MTC has been stressing in all of its publicity that the show is rated R. When the cast participated in downtown Youngstown’s Christmas Parade with the puppets, Asente said, “We were running down Market Street shouting, ‘Don’t bring your kids to this show.'”

Ohle described the project as “a labor of love” and said she’s already secured some commissions for Out of Hand Puppets because of MTC promoting her work.

“During my years in Youngstown, I was always a big proponent of cooperative and collaborative arts,” she said. “Being able to cooperate amongst each other and do something great has been really wonderful.”

MTC will benefit from the collaboration well beyond the run of the show. Asente said hiring Ohle to build their puppets wasn’t much more expensive than it would have been to rent them. Now the puppets are MTC’s property, and they can be rented to other theaters.

“We’re trying to invest in major set pieces or props from the shows we do and then rent them out to other theaters to earn passive income,” he said. “‘Avenue Q’ closes Jan. 29, and the puppets are already going out for rental the next day.”

If you go …

WHAT: Millennial Theatre Company — “Avenue Q”

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Jan. 27, 2 p.m. Sunday and 2 and 7:30 p.m. Jan. 28 and 29

WHERE: Hopewell Theatre, 702 Mahoning Ave., Youngstown

HOW MUCH: Tickets are $20 and are available online at millennialtheatre.org. The first two performances are sold out.