NINA WESTERVELT
Devon Borkowski with Dan Diana as The Jersey Devil in “The Devil and Daisy Dirt.”
Is it a gothic tale? A bluegrass concert? An alt-folk event? A horror show?
If you ask Alex Dawson, “The Devil and Daisy Dirt,” his one-hour spectacle of Pinelands pandemonium touring New Jersey breweries, bars, barns and occasionally a real theater, is all that and then some.
“I call it a bluegrass tall tale about the Jersey Devil with an 8-foot puppet,” says the Highlands Park Rutgers professor, who teaches creative writing and folklore when he isn’t starring in and directing his play with music based on New Jersey’s most famous mythical creature.
What started as a “backyard haunt” during one Halloween — called “Catch the Devil,” with a P.T. Barnum-like character hunting the Jersey Devil in The Pine Barrens — has turned into a full-bore immersive experience that features a Broadway-quality 8-foot Jersey Devil puppet constructed and worn by the play’s co-creator Dan Diana, a former special FX artist and prop fabricator in Hollywood.
“We’re monster-makers, not just at Halloween,” says Dawson. “So we wanted to figure out how we could do this thing year-round. We designed the show to be mobile. And we treat it like we’re a band and perform in nontraditional theatrical spaces in the Tri-State — spots I call hidden wonders.”
On April 12 and 13, the show sold out at the Historic Barn at the Pinelands Preservation Alliance in Southampton. With 74 percent of the town located within the Pinelands National Reserve, it was sort of like playing for the home team.
Alex Dawson in “The Devil and Daisy Dirt.”
Upcoming venues will include rare performances in two traditional theaters: April 26 at The Parsippany Arts Center in Boonton and May 3 at Roy’s Hall in Blairstown.
“The Jersey Devil is a core memory for me,” says Lauren Mills of LoMotion Live, who has been staging shows at The Parsippany Arts Center’s 96-seat black box theater for the past three years.
“I remember hearing the Jersey Devil story in grade school in Pequannock. I love urban legends, folklore, ghost stories — things that are spine-tingly. And I found this show to be so interesting, with an 8-foot wearable puppet that comes onstage and music that has a folky, haunting sound. It’s really stunning.”
“The Devil and Daisy Dirt” premiered a year ago at the Old Franklin Schoolhouse in Metuchen and has sold out 15 shows across New Jersey and in New York’s East Village. The magazine Weird N.J. devoted its October ’24 cover to the chilling cryptid (a creature claimed, but unproven, to exist), calling the production “the most original, Jersey-centric and downright weird presentation in our state’s theatrical history.”
But “The Devil and Daisy Dirt” isn’t your grandfather’s tale of a cursed monster stalking the Pine Barrens. Dawson says his version of the classic story is more nuanced and revolves around the companionable behemoth and its relationship with Daisy, a beleaguered waitress working at her deceased grandfather’s family-owned diner. Daisy is played by Jackie Fogel, a New York/L.A. actress who also teaches middle school theater in Westfield.
Dawson describes the show as a Pinelands “Our Town” meets “E.T.” It just stars a cryptid instead of a stranded extraterrestrial, and deer hunters instead of federal agents. A portal opens at the top of a fire tower after a midnight lightning strike on Devil Day, instead of opening on a mothership from another planet.
Daisy is bringing trash out and finds the Jersey Devil creature wounded in the dumpster behind the diner. She vows that she must save the monster from the awful men around her.
“The creature is like King Kong or Frankenstein. It’s mythic, not monstrous, and the villains are the humans,” says Dawson. “There’s magic, mead, special powers and witches. Daisy, like Elliott in ‘E.T.,’ forms quite a bond with the creature, which is somewhere between a human and a horse. It’s our interpretation of the Jersey Devil.”
NINA WESTERVELT
ARLAN FEILES
And tapping into the mood of this mysterious other world is Arlan Feiles. The well-regarded Asbury Park singer-songwriter created and sings the show’s haunting music.
“I like the idea that not every inch of our world is zoned for McDonald’s,” says Dawson. “Cryptids are very connected to the land. They exist in places where the woods are deep or the water is deep or the mountains are high. So there’s a belief in the natural world.”
Dawson has an abiding love for what he calls “the dark fantastic,” having grown up on a sprawling horse ranch in the woods of Hurtsboro, Alabama.
“We had these red clay roads through the farm and I’d go out with my brother camping, or riding a little 50cc Suzuki, and there were lagoons and swamps and ropey vines, Spanish moss,” he said. “I used to fill up these little top-spiral notebooks with stories.”
The boys also were raised by a mother who encouraged their sense of adventure. “My mother seemed to believe in a lot of things. Sometimes I wonder if she was just trying to make the hot, slow world of Alabama more interesting to us. But she believed in witches in the woods and fairies in the flower bush. She believed in little people living in tree hollows and lizards the size of dinosaurs in the lake.”
So it is not surprising that the ancient tale of the Jersey Devil would stoke Dawson’s imagination. And though it’s a remaking of the traditional narrative, the show is enjoying success.
The Jersey Devil, on the cover of Weird N.J. magazine.
“The reception has been way bigger and enthusiastic than we expected,” says Dawson. “The interesting thing is we say it’s PG-13. There’s no gore, no nudity. There might be one curse word in it, but it has very dark themes.
“Some people might bring 10-year-olds and they might be scared at first. But they quickly realize this puppet strikes awe but not fear. I’m like the stage manager in ‘Our Town.’ I’m the narrator — manic and performative. So it has an electric energy and it has these great songs by Arlan.
“Jackie and Dan, who play Daisy and the monster, are the heart of the show. These are the people who make you cry in how they save one another. They are reclaiming themselves. Like, it’s never too late to wake up. So there’s a hopeful ending.”
Dawson says they will continue booking shows through the summer and there is talk about bringing the production to Paris for a few days and perhaps taking it to some southern states.
“It’s a show that’s rustic enough so the people I grew up with will appreciate it, even though it’s weird and avant-garde on the surface.”
Weird? Not quite as weird as if the Jersey Devil showed up onstage eating a Taylor ham, egg and cheese sandwich from the diner.
Now that would truly be avant-garde.
“The Devil and Daisy Dirt” will be presented at The Parsippany Arts Center in Boonton, April 26 at 8 p.m.; and at Roy’s Hall in Blairstown, May 3 at 8 p.m. For ticket links, and a complete list of other shows, visit thedevilanddaisydirt.blogspot.com/p/calendar.html.
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