MICHAEL DOLAN
Jackie Fogel as Daisy Dirt with Dan Diana as The Jersey Devil, in “The Devil & Daisy Dirt.”
Since premiering in 2024, “The Devil & Daisy Dirt” — which promotes itself as a “gothic mix of storytelling, theater, vaudeville (and) back porch session,” in which The Jersey Devil is portrayed by an 8-foot puppet — has been presented mostly at one-night stands in both theaters and unconventional venues. But from Feb. 20 to Feb. 22, it will come to The New Brunswick Performing Arts Center for a rare four-show stand.
It is being being co-presented at NBPAC by filmmaker Kevin Smith (“Clerks,” “Dogma,” “Chasing Amy”), Smith’s SModcastle Cinemas, and Weird NJ magazine.
“The show is designed to be impressive but to be lean and mobile,” says its writer, director and narrator Alex Dawson, a Rutgers creative writing professor. In the past, he says, “we operated like a band, so we toured. We did barns. Things with no instruments. Sometimes no stage. Always a very dynamic venue, but they were improvised theaters in many instances. Music halls and whatnot. And it was great.”
The show first came to NBPAC in November. “We basically just moved that rustic show — that sort of hoedown version of ‘The Devil & Daisy Dirt’ — into this beautiful theater,” Dawson says, adding that he asked NBPAC managing director Mark Sharp if they would devote an entire weekend to “The Devil & Daisy Dirt,” if the November show sold out. Sharp agreed.
The show did, indeed, sell out, and once the February weekend was booked, Dawson says he thought to himself, “we’ve got to take full advantage of being in one place. … We load in on Thursday, we’re there for the whole weekend. … I was a set designer in New York for many years and so I said, ‘OK, 1. We’re gonna build a set. And 2. One of the things they have is a great projection system.’ I saw MOMIX’s presentation of ‘Alice,’ which is a sort of psychedelic dance troupe. I saw that in New York. That was very inspiring. And I saw, online, clips from this ballet version of ‘Edward Scissorhands,’ and I loved how they used projections, and that’s something that they absolutely have set up and it’s very easy to do at NBPAC
COURTESY OF I 8 THE DEVIL PRODUCTIONS
ALEX DAWSON
“So I created these immersive projections. There’s a spectacular ending (to ‘The Devil & Daisy Dirt’). We’ve done it with a smash to black and some fog and sounds: That’s how we did it because we were in a barn. But now, there’s lightning strikes, and sort of like portals to other worlds and galaxies opening up. So now we have this huge psychedelic ending.”
Dawson will be joined at NBPAC by Jackie Fogel, as Daisy Dirt; the show’s co-producer, Dan Diana, inside the Devil puppet costume; and veteran New Jersey musician Arlan Feiles, as the Balladeer.
Dawson says he and Diana have worked together on many projects, over the years, “and our approach to monsters was always … even though I write a lot of folk horror, (‘The Devil & Daisy Dirt’) had a Guillermo del Toro kind of beauty. We always saw it as operatic. We had done a staged version of ‘Nosferatu’ 15 years ago that was going out to L.A. and … anyway, it fell apart, but that’s the sort of thing it was. It was gorgeous. And we knew that there was a beauty we hadn’t achieved” with “The Devil & Daisy Dirt.”
“The comparisons I use for people who are considering seeing it again: You have things like ‘Mad Max’ (the 1979 film) and ‘Road Warrior’ (its 1981 sequel), which went from gritty to grand. And that became the definitive Mad Max movie.
“It’s not a question of just throwing money at it. It’s a question of using all the immersive sound, the immersive light grid, the projections of the theater. It’s a question of knowing that we’re in one place for more than a few hours.”
ROB WASILEWSKI
Arlan Feiles in “The Devil & Daisy Dirt.”
Being in a “hometown theater” also influences their approach.
“We’ve gone as far as North Carolina, so everything had to be packed in the back of my Pilot (SUV) — which is big as far as cars go, but not big as far as moving vans go,” says Dawson. “Here, I live in Highland Park, so I can make as many trips as I want to bring elements to the theater.
“The trick for us was to hold on to everything that made it so beloved, while also opening it up a little bit. Like, I do a lot of Foley sounds in it, and we’re holding on to a lot of those: using those as triggers for the immersive, audience-swallowing sound of a well equipped theater. So as the play progresses … it starts as this story that is maybe being told around a campfire, but the audience gets kind of swallowed up by that world, and everything starts to surround them and the lights and the sound get far more immersive. You’re a third of the way in and it’s less of somebody telling a story in a very theatrical way, and more of, the audience has entered that world.”
Dawson says one thing that is “really special” is that “The Devil & Daisy Dirt” could help to define what the mysterious Jersey Devil is.
“So many people love the Jersey Devil, but they didn’t have a story to hang that love on. I mean, the origin story is one of a murderous, child-eating demon. This is not that story at all. And I think a lot of the people who love the Jersey Devil, who grew up thinking of it very fondly … they now have a story, and I think we’ve done it enough times, where I think it’s sort of been folded into the lore.
MICHAEL DOLAN
The Jersey Devil and Kevin Smith.
“I’ve said it numerous times, but the creature is mythic and magical, and then the monsters are the men. It’s that whole Shakespearean quote, you know: ‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here.’ The source of villainy and torment is not the creature that looks different. It’s the people that look like us. So the creature is a symbol of the natural world — a representation that there are still secrets and wonder to behold. It’s something that, in a way, needs to be saved.”
Kevin Smith’s involvement follows a presentation of the play at his SModcastle Cinemas in Atlantic Highlands, in September.
“I may make movies, but I also enjoy engaging an audience with the immediacy of live performance; offering them a singular experience that can never be exactly replicated,” Smith told Fangoria magazine, adding that “The Devil & Daisy Dirt” does this “while adding an element of the fantastic that’s normally reserved for the silver screen. Give the Devil its due. This is a spectacular show.”
The New Brunswick Performing Arts Center will present “The Devil & Daisy Dirt” at 8 p.m. Feb. 20; 6 and 9 p.m. Feb. 21; and 2 p.m. Feb. 22. Some of the proceeds will go to the Pinelands Preservation Alliance. Visit nbpac.org.
For more on “The Devil & Daisy Dirt,” visit thedevilanddaisydirt.blogspot.com/p/what.html.
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