Scotland has Nessie, Bigfoot is rumored to be rumbling around the Pacific Northwest, and Yeti roams the Himalayas, it is said.
But New Jersey also has its own beloved cryptid — the Jersey Devil, the legend of Leed’s Point and the Pinelands, the eerie star of countless fireside sagas that go back through the ages.
It’s about time for a new story trajectory for “JD,” and New Jersey-based playwright and educator Alex Dawson has created just this, with his work “The Devil and Daisy Dirt.”
“We love cryptids because they are so tied to the unexplored landscape,” says Dawson, a professor of creative writing at Rutgers University. “There are parts of this world that are still uncharted, that haven’t been zoned for a Target or McDonalds. Cryptids represent this kind of wonder, and there’s a hunger for this.”
He describes his play as a campfire tale or radio drama, something that allows for the psychic space in your brain to be fired up.
“The Devil and Daisy Dirt,” written, directed, and narrated by Dawson, will be presented at Old City Hall in Bordentown on Saturday, October 11, with two shows, at 6:30 and 9 p.m. It’s presented by the Old City Hall Restoration Committee. (This play is rated PG.)
His creative partner is puppeteer/special effects wizard Dan Diana, who also plays the Jersey Devil, or rather, inhabits the creature in an elaborate eight-foot-tall puppet.
This “Garden State Gothic Alt-Folk Event” also features original bluegrass music written and played by renowned Asbury Park-based composer/balladeer Arlan Fieles.
Jackie Fogel, actress/singer/educator and veteran of the New York theater scene, plays Daisy Dirt.
Dawson assumes the other minor roles and takes care of everything else, essentially.
“I play the narrator/storyteller, as well as all the other characters but Daisy and the Devil,” he says. “I also run the lights, fog machine, and do a range of Foley sound effects, all from my downstage station. I keep myself busy up there.”
It’s an “ET” meets “Our Town” kind of story, which takes place on the night of an annual appetite contest called “I 8 the Devil,” when waitress Daisy Dirt finds something strange — winged and antlered, wounded but alive — in the dumpster behind Lucille’s Luncheonette (aka the Devil’s Diner).
With the help of a Piney palm reader named Effie and a piece of magic muscle meat from the basement game locker, Daisy evades a villainous poacher and risks everything to save it.
“The Devil and Daisy Dirt,” which has been performed all around New Jersey and the tri-state area and south to Maryland and North Carolina, is receiving an array of praise, even from celebrated author Joyce Carol Oates.
An outstanding run at the Pinelands Preservation Alliance headquarters in Pemberton was received with special enthusiasm. Audience members told Dawson that he had nailed the people and atmosphere of the Jersey Pines.
Dawson, who currently lives in Highland Park, did not grow up in or near New Jersey. He hails from Alabama, where his mystically inclined mother introduced young Alex to the wonders of the low country woods and swamps that surrounded the family ranch.
“She liked to wake us up for celestial events, eclipses and occultations, or sometimes just because the moon looked nice on the lake or there was fog in the fields,” he says.
When Dawson moved to New Jersey and first explored the Pinelands, he was pleased to find that the landscape resembled parts of his home state.
“I think it holds true that the Pineys are similar to the people I grew up with, fishing and hunting, etc., and if you get deep enough into the woods, all the shadows look the same,” he says.
Dawson’s feel for the region, its flora, fauna, and people, was almost instinctual, and that’s reflected in the play.
“I researched what grows where, what sounds you might hear, and yes, the play is populated with things that grow in the Pine Barrens,” he says.
Not to mention places such as Apple Pie Hill and the aforementioned Lucille’s, a treasure of country cooking in Warren Grove.
Dawson got the idea for “The Devil and Daisy Dirt” after a random visit to the diner on Route 539.
“We were coming back from Atlantic City and needed a place to eat,” he says. “We found Lucille’s, and I noticed the waitress was wearing a t-shirt that said ‘I Ate with the Jersey Devil,’ and that inspired me.”
The plot centers on a lonely waitress, Daisy Dirt (Fogel), who has worked there for years and dreams of escape.
“Daisy has lived a very small and repressed life, sublimated to all these men who come into the diner and harass her,” Dawson says.
When she encounters the injured Jersey Devil outside the diner and befriends it, she risks everything to save the creature.
“She hangs a lot of her sense of self on this, it’s a move of power, she’s coming into her own,” Dawson says. “Her relationship with the Jersey Devil is her way of standing up and being counted.”
And what a work of art is the Jersey Devil itself.
Diana was a special effects artist in Hollywood for almost a decade, working on a variety of films and TV shows; for example, he built the battered Iron Man helmet in “Avengers Endgame.”
“The Jersey Devil creature suit design was inspired in equal parts by Big Bird and the Tiger puppet from the Broadway production of ‘Life of Pi,’ which needed three people to bring it to life,” Diana says. “The main thing to consider was that I would be the only performer wearing and operating the Jersey Devil.”
“I’d be strapped into this thing for more than an hour each show, so I knew it had to be as comfortable and lightweight as possible. It’s made from Styrofoam, carbon fiber, and lots of fur, with straps holding all the joints together,” he explains, adding that bungee cords secure the mostly 3D printed head onto the shoulders.
All of this is mounted to an Alice backpack frame, which distributes the weight (40 pounds) evenly onto Diana’s torso.
It would be revealing too many stagecraft secrets to expound on the rest. Most importantly, Diana is able to convey an extraordinary breadth of emotion and sentiment with just the sway of the beast’s head.
“He expresses complex body language, and Dan had to figure this all out,” Dawson says. “(The costume) really looks like an animal; it doesn’t look like someone in a suit.”
Diana says one of the aspects of inhabiting the Jersey Devil was figuring out how to interact with Daisy/Fogel during their times together.
“She’s following a script, but for me, it’s about being in the moment, like improvising jazz,” he says.
Fogel did not originate the character of Daisy Dirt, and the play took on a new dimension when she stepped into the role, thanks to her musical skills. Dawson even crafted a song specifically for Daisy to expand on her inner life.
“We had always talked about Daisy singing, and since Jackie has a gorgeous voice, I wrote something for her,” Dawson says. “It’s kind of a murder ballad, where she fantasizes about fighting back against the abuse she gets working in the diner every day.”
“Throughout the play, Daisy hasn’t spoken much, her lines have just been practical, there’s been no interiority,” he adds. “So the song is flipping the script and Daisy is speaking out. It’s like outlaw country, like something Wanda Jackson might sing.”
He reflects that on certain nights, the players know when the audience has really connected with the song’s meaning and Fogel’s delivery.
“It’s not the end of the show, but it’s the first moment that the audience has applauded, and it’s powerful,” Dawson says.
The playwright was raised by a rancher stepfather and a mother who was a model, teacher, artist, novelist, international tour guide, and horse and dog trainer. A world traveler, she took young Alex to Africa when he was 10.
Dawson and Diana grew up 1,000 miles and a decade apart, but when they met, they discovered they had similar inspirations: “The same flicks, the creature features of the day, lots of zombies, etc.,” Dawson says.
In their youth, both guys also made movies with their friends.
“Those childhood projects are our guiding light,” Dawson says. “We’re hairier now, and the projects are more lavish. But the wonder and excitement is the same.”
Dawson went to the Mason Gross School of the Arts for 3.5 years but ultimately graduated from Rutgers with a degree in English.
At 18, Diana studied Prosthetic Makeup at Tom Savini’s (“Dawn of the Dead,” “Friday the 13th,” etc.) Special Effects Makeup School just south of Pittsburgh.
By the way, neither Dawson nor Diana believe in the Jersey Devil, but both enjoy the aura of mystery surrounding this and other old stories and legends.
And neither wants “JD” and other cryptids to be analyzed, clarified, and rationalized.
“If something like the Jersey Devil was exposed, it would destroy its essence,” Diana says.
“I am interested in the wonder and the story and the magic,” Dawson says. “I am not interested in something that can be explained logically. It becomes uninteresting when it becomes fact.”
“There’s got to be some magic in this world,” he says. “I’ve had my share of ambiguous experiences, and I am glad there’s the possibility of all these things, the myths that I so love, the fog of the night.”
The Devil and Daisy Dirt, Old City Hall, 11 Crosswicks Street, Bordentown. Saturday, October 11, 6:30 and 9 p.m. Rated PG. $25 plus fees via EventBrite. www.facebook.com/OldCityHallRestoration.
On the Web: thedevilanddaisydirt.blogspot.com.
