For the most part, Sesame Street taught me to read. Is it any wonder, then, that I love puppetry? I'm a huge Star Wars fan (go, Disney!), and in several screen incarnations, Jedi Master Yoda, Admiral Ackbar and Jabba the Hutt were sophisticated puppets. E.T. and Audrey II were puppets as well, and while Jurassic Park was justly praised for its cutting-edge CGI, that pioneer project includes only 52 shots of digital animation. The T. rex and raptors appeared as full-size animatronics. The Triceratops existed solely as a massive puppet. Even such latter-day popcorn flicks as Prometheus and The Cabin in the Woods made extensive use of the art form.

Puppets have been cast in live theater for at least three millennia. They're especially integral to Asian forms of drama, including Chinese shadow theater, Thai Hun Krabok and Vietnamese mua roi nuoc (water puppetry). These Asian genres informed director Mary Zimmerman's dazzling take on a Chinese folk tale, The White Snake, at this year's Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The live version of Pink Floyd's The Wall is famous for its large-scale puppetry, and Julie Taymor's The Lion King is chockablock with bunraku characters. The actors performing Timon and Zazu wear bright colors that our visual cortexes erase from the scene within minutes. Before War Horse was a holiday Spielberg movie, it won a Tony for best play, largely on the merits of an outstanding (and ride-able) horse designed and performed by Handspring Puppet Company.

I say "performed" rather than "puppeteered" because performing a puppet is acting. Some critics seem unwilling to grasp this, but crafting a believable performance from either a Muppet or a motion-capture digital character requires the same skills any actor employs on stage, plus a few new ones. We realize this when a character's so compelling and relatable that we find ourselves making eye contact with a glorified sock.

Locally, puppets are a staple of live performance. Olympia Family Theater dipped its toe into the craft on BFG and Frog and Toad, then dove in headfirst on Bunnicula and Goodnight Moon. Floating World at Pacific Lutheran University made outstanding use of bunraku rod puppets to turn college actors into grade-school kids. I'm chagrined to admit the most popular character in my own production of Fuddy Meers was an insane sock puppet, "Hinky Binky," constructed and performed by Chris Cantrell.

Then there's Avenue Q. We don't usually feature Seattle productions, but this cast includes two actors, Katie Griffith and Casey Raiha, who came up in Olympia theater. The show's an adult-humor take on Sesame Street. Its Henson-style rod puppets swear, have boisterous sex and worry about their raison d'etre, but they also engage the audience on a sweet, emotional level. Thanks to quality acting (and singing!) plus the technical expertise of assistant director Douglas Wilcott, we find ourselves caring deeply about the career and romantic travails of two handfuls of polyfoam and fleece. The songs are limerick-simple but catchy as hell. Best of all, the show is riotously funny. The self-described "persons of fur" who inhabit Avenue Q are as human as anyone you're likely to meet in a theater.

BALAGAN THEATRE AT THE ERICKSON, AVENUE Q, THROUGH DEC. 16, 8 P.M. THURSDAY-SATURDAY, 2 P.M. SUNDAY, $20-$25, 1524 HARVARD AVE., SEATTLE, 206.329.1050