Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette As Lisa Ferrugia makes a monkey puppet come to life, Jim Martin, Emmy Award-winning director and puppeteer, has some fun with the character he and his wife, Crystal, created for Prime Stage Theatre's presentation of "A Little Princess." Click photo for larger image.

With all the computer-generated quaking chickens and zooming superheroes getting top billing, it's a tough time for puppets.

Just ask Jim Martin, an Emmy-award winning director of "Sesame Street" and the invisible right hand of Oscar the Grouch.

"Everybody wants computer-generated, the latest technology," says Martin, who lives on the North Side.

It's enough to make Oscar even grouchier, and Mr. Martin, a puppeteer who is anything but grouchy, scramble harder for work.

But even if they are upstaged by flashier high-tech critters, a puppet is more immediate and less expensive, Martin says, and it can still steal the show.

Consider the audience fascination with the monkey puppet that Martin, and his wife, Crystal, developed for Prime Stage Theatre's production of "A Little Princess," which opened Saturday and runs on weekends through Dec. 18.

The realistic-looking capuchin monkey sits on the shoulder of the Indian gentleman and befriends the little princess, Sara. The crowd giggled and gasped as the monkey squawked and fidgeted. "Look there's a monkey," a little boy yelled out during the preview performance Friday night.

Martin, a 54-year-old with a kind, child-friendly voice, made the monkey puppet as a personal favor to his old college buddy, Wayne Brinda, founder and artistic director of Prime Stage. Brinda and Martin had gone to Point Park College together and have stayed in touch for the past 30 years.

When Brinda read about Martin winning an Emmy for directing "Sesame Street," a puppeteer's dream job, Brinda called his old friend. He asked him for a favor -- to develop a monkey puppet for the show.

But it had to be a realistic-looking monkey, not a cuddly Muppet-like creature.

Ever since he started his own puppet company called the Pupplets in the 1970s, Martin has created a lot of fanciful, soft, zany puppets, but not realistic-looking animals.

"Why don't you get a real monkey?" he asked Brinda.

But the people at the theater company didn't know if they could locate one or if they could afford to train a monkey.

Martin agreed to make the puppet, but he couldn't puppeteer because he and five other directors would be in the throes of shooting 26 new episodes of "Sesame Street."

So Martin worked on a realistic monkey after 12-hour workdays, part of them spent crawling into a garbage can with Carroll "Big Bird" Spinney, who is also Oscar the Grouch. Martin manipulates the right hand of Oscar while Spinney does the left hand and voice and head movements/

"He is a great puppeteer," says puppeteer Carmen Osbahr, a k a Rosita. As director, "he always has new ideas and funny ideas."

Making a puppet was slow after his days directing Sesame Street, which he does for 7 weeks on the set in Queens, New York. He would think about the monkey puppet on his commute to and from a relative's house in upstate New York.

His wife, Crystal, a writer, would start puppet prototypes.

But finally, it came to him. He would put the monkey, named Chungo, on the end of a child's Claw toy, allowing the trigger mechanism to open and shut the mouth.

The couple spent more than a thousand hours painstakingly assembling and hand-sewing the monkey, which has a plastic skull and foam-and-wire limbs covered in fur and a fox tongue from a taxidermist.

No detail was too small to escape their notice. They added oil and painted a brown fake fur coat to make it look mangy. The wooden bead eyes blink like a baby doll's, and the teeth are uneven and yellowed.

The result is realistic but in an adorable way.

Originally, they were even more realistic, using a latex face and sharp fang-like teeth.

But they were worried the target audience of young girls would run out of the audience screaming. The original version, quips Martin, belongs in a horror flick named, "Killer Monkeys" or "Monkeys Gone Wild."

So they softened his looks a tad.

Even so, lead actress Kat Whittam, who plays Sara, was taken aback when she first saw him. "All the teeth and tongue and he was right on my shoulder. It was a little scary." But she warmed to him. "He can blink. He is really cute."

Martin coached her in one scene to pick up the monkey like a baby and to treat him sweetly.

"The more you treat the monkey like it is real, the more the audience will be on your side," he says.

The monkey moves and makes noises through puppeteer Lisa Ferrugia, a 27-year-old dancer from East Liberty. She stands on stage, behind the monkey, dressed in black. Martin coached her to keep him moving like a real animal.

"She's a dancer," he said. "She gets it."

The monkey's big scene stealer is when a startled cook screams when she sees him on Sara's shoulder, and the monkey screeches back at her. During that scene at a rehearsal, director Lora Oxenreiter said, "If that doesn't get a laugh, they are all dead in the theater."

Martin is happy to create a puppet for a Pittsburgh show.

But he will travel wherever his puppetry takes him. A few years ago, he and his wife flew to Korea to put on a children's play they wrote. Martin directed and manipulated some of the five American puppets and 15 Korean puppets in the show.

"I split my time between here and wherever will hire me."

Performances of "A Little Princess" will run on weekends through Dec. 18 at Prime Stage Theatre, 937 Liberty Ave., Downtown. Performances are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays. For tickets, call 412-394-3353 or www.PrimeStage.com.