Sympathy for The Devil & Daisy Dirt at the Arts Council of Princeton
The culture of the New Jersey Pine Barrens is unique because it has developed in geographic isolation, shaped by the region’s sandy soil, dense forests, and rural character. Known for its independence, resilience, and folklore, Pine Barrens culture reflects a blend of historical self-sufficiency and deep-rooted connection to the land. It is a place that is rich in oral history and legend, most famously the tale of the Jersey Devil, a winged creature said to haunt the woods. This folklore is not just entertainment, but a cultural glue that ties generations together and highlights the area’s sense of mystery and otherness.
Stories about monsters reveal deep truths about our humanity by externalizing our fears, anxieties, and moral struggles. Monsters often represent what we consider “other”—the unknown, the repressed, or the unacceptable aspects of ourselves and society. By confronting these creatures in stories, we symbolically confront issues like death, disease, prejudice, guilt, or unchecked ambition. The way characters respond to monsters—whether with fear, compassion, violence, or curiosity—also reveals our values, biases, and capacity for empathy. Ultimately, monster stories are mirrors. They allow us to explore what it means to be human by dramatizing the boundaries between self and other, good and evil, reason and instinct. In battling or embracing monsters, we discover who we are.
Writer/Director/Actor/Producer of The Devil & Daisy Dirt, Alex Dawson said: “I’m interested in a certain kind of monster, cryptids. Cryptids are very folkloric and they’re connected to the landscape, and they’re found in the deep woods, and they give you faith that the entire world is not zoned for a McDonald’s. They give us hope that there are still places that contain secrets and wonder, whether they be deep in the Pine Barrens or the woods of Alabama (where I grew up), you know, just something slightly off the map. Everything I write is connected to the woods in some way.”
“I had a mother who never met a story she didn’t like. Whether she believed in a lot of these things, witches in the woods, dripping with what she called tree hair, this sort of gray, wispy beard moss or, lizards in the lake the size of dinosaurs, that crooked pines were haunted, there were fairies in the flower bush, and all this kind of stuff. She generated a lot of her own sort of myths, and so she either believed in it, or maybe she was trying to make the hot, slow world of the Alabama woods more interesting.”
“Dan Diana, who’s my artistic partner and the guy who worked in Hollywood for years, creates these incredible effects, props, and puppets for the work that I do. We both, you know, we honor the monster. The monster is a monster, but our monsters are mythic. And if the monsters are saying something about humans, really, what we’re saying is that the monsters are the humans. This piece is more like ET [the movie], it’s something that’s magical and mythic. The villain of the piece is a voracious, gluttonous hunter named Tasty Murder. And it’s so very much that Shakespeare quote, ‘Hell is empty and the devils right here.’ I don’t want to say that what I write or that I believe that fantasy sci-fi or horror stories are escapism, because I believe that those stories tell us and teach us meaningful things. But also, the monsters are a bit of an escape, believing in them or not believing them, but just sort of reveling in them.”
“The show has definitely changed and grown over its run. That’s the great thing about theater. In some ways, it’s unfortunate, in a way, that you don’t have a fixed product; nothing is concrete. It’s constantly changing. You’re constantly learning about it, making it tighter, better. There’s something that we added just a couple of months ago, which completely brought it to a different level. The character of Daisy, played by Jackie Fogel, now has a song. Through a lot of the show, she’s kind of tight-lipped. Then she has this song, which is essentially a murder ballad, a sort of fantasy of hers, but she gives voice to it. It starts with her yelling like a powerful shout, and then she gives voice to all the things she’s been thinking. The piece became a much more feminist message. As we went along, I gave that character of Daisy more and more of a voice. And it became, not that it’s less about the Jersey devil, but it became more about her.”
“I had originally envisioned a character that was sort of naive, the kind of girl who had never cut her hair and was sort of being pushed around by the tides. Jackie Fogel understudied the original actress, and we just loved her, what she did with the role, and I sort of rewrote the character. Instead of being 19 or 20, she was now in her early 30s and she had been boiling and simmering, for years, just sort of eating all this crap and just taking it. Essentially, she was ready to pop. She realizes she must save this creature from the awful men around her. It becomes the night that she might just stand up for herself. Her song is where she fantasizes about lashing out against these men who have tormented her for so many years and leaving. I had to convince both Arlen Feiles, our amazing balladeer, and Jackie that this was the right move. They were worried that this would make this character unlikable. I told them murder ballads had been very much a part of Bluegrass and Western Swing, except they almost always end with the woman not breathing. This is where we were flipping the script. This is more like if “the Queen of Rockabilly,” Wanda Jackson, has a great murder ballad. And people just cheered.”
“When I set out to write something, I’m never thinking about what I’m saying. I’m just thinking about telling a really, really engaging story. But obviously, the things that you feel - we’re all political creatures - our beliefs will find their way into the story. And when you stand back, you’re sort of picking at those strands and making some of those things more pronounced, and discover - this is what it’s saying, whether you consciously intended it or not. And then you make sure that most of the people walk away knowing that.”
For more information, visit: TheDevilandDaisyDirt.blogspot.com
Register here: https://artscouncilofprinceton.org/event/devil-daisy-dirt/
This event will be held in the Solley Theater at the Arts Council of Princeton on July 10 @ 7:30 PM - 8:30 PM. Admission is free, but reservations are strongly encouraged. Co-sponsored by the Princeton Library and Arts Council of Princeton with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Devil & Daisy Dirt will also take the stage at:
- Roxbury Arts Alliance, Saturday, August 16th
- Avenel Performing Arts Center, Sunday, October 5th
- New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, Saturday, November 8th (ticket info TBA)
THE DEVIL & DAISY DIRT
Written & Directed by Alex Dawson
Music Composed & Produced by Arlan Feiles
Lyrics by Alex Dawson & Arlan Feiles
Produced by Alex Dawson & Dan Diana
Narrator………………..Alex Dawson
Balladeer………………..Arlan Feiles
Daisy Dirt…………Jackie Fogel
The Devil………………….Dan Diana
Setting: The Pine Barrens
Time: Devil Day
