'Dog Man: The Musical' Unleashes the Pilkey-verse Onstage

From the mind of Captain Underpants creator Dav Pilkey, Dog Man is half dog, half policeman, and the beloved subject of 14 graphic novels, a major motion picture, and a theatrical production—Dog Man: The Musical. Director/choreographer Jen Wineman, book writer/lyricist Kevin Del Aguila, and composer Brad Alexander discuss bringing this beloved character and his strange, silly world to the stage.

The Dog Man: The Musical tour will perform at Bergen PAC on Saturday, March 21st and State Theatre New Jersey on Sunday, March 22nd. 

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Transcript

Who is Dog Man?

Maddie Orton 0:02

Hi, I'm Maddie Orton, and this is the Jersey Arts Podcast. If you've got kids, nieces, nephews, you may already know that Dogman is the talk of the playground. From the mind of Captain Underpants creator Dave Pilke, Dogman is half dog, half police man, and the beloved subject of 14 graphic novels, video game, and a DreamWorks major motion picture. With funny, punny book titles like Fetch 22, Clever Character Names, and a distinctive style, it's no wonder Dogman became the source material for a theatrical production as well. Dogman the Musical premiered in 2019 and is currently touring through the US, making its way to the Garden State with performances at Bergen Pack in Englewood on Saturday, March 21st, and State Theater New Jersey in New Brunswick on Sunday, March 22nd. I spoke with director choreographer Jen Weinman, book writer and lyricist Kevin Del Aguila, and composer Brad Alexander to hear all about how they brought this beloved character and his strange, silly world to the stage. Take a listen. Brad, Jen, Kevin, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. So great to talk to you guys.

Jen Wineman 1:18

Our pleasure.

Maddie Orton 1:18

So I'm excited to talk to you about this because Dogman is actually something that I already talk a lot about as the parent of a six-year-old. So yeah, I was wondering, were you all familiar with Dave Pilke's work before this? How did you come to Dave Pilke and this project and dogman in general? Brad, you want to start?

Brad Alexander 1:37

Sure, happy to. Well, I love telling this story, and I suspect it's in fact I know that Kevin's and maybe Jen's too is a little similar. Kevin and I had written up a whole bunch of stuff for Theaterworks USA and already had a relationship going with them. And Barbara Pasternak, the artistic director, called me one day and said, Hey, would you and Kevin be interested in adapting Dogman into a musical, the Dogman Books? And my jaw hit the floor because we had the entire collection in our possession.

Maddie Orton 2:16

Oh right in the pocket of Dogman. Right.

Brad Alexander 2:20

In the pocket. Yeah. And we were obsessed and like it just it really did make like bedtime reading fun for grown-ups, finally. Like it just was like, because you know, like the the humor is is is for the kids and and and and for the grown-ups. And I just I just thought I cannot believe of the thousands of children's titles in the world that this was the one that that she had secured the rights to. So I was over the moon, and and all I could think of was, I can't wait to tell my kid. He's gonna lose his mind. So we were very familiar, and and it was just uh immediately exciting.

Maddie Orton 2:56

Jen, Kevin, do you guys have kids as well who were dogman fans?

Kevin Del Aguila 3:00

Yeah, I had the same, the same kind of thing. I I um when I got the call, I didn't really know the dogman books, but I looked over and I saw my kid like reading dogman and giggling in the corner, and I was like, oh my gosh, tell me everything you know about dogman. And and it was very, very soon that I learned just how popular the books were. And then once you hear about it, you look around, you know, the elementary school, you're like, everybody is reading Dogman here, you know. I had no idea what a big deal it was. So it was uh kind of thrilling to be thrown into that into that world. But yes, my son was around the same age as as Brad's son, so we were, you know, very inundated in the Pilkyverse as well.

Jen Wineman 3:46

Yeah. And I uh I'm much younger than Brad and Kevin. So uh my son was only three at the time when we started talking about this, and uh, so we weren't quite there yet, but I he's 10 now, and then we also now have a six-year-old. So Dogman is very still a huge deal in our home, uh, even today. But I went to the bookstore and I'd heard of Captain Underpants, but I'd I was sort of too old to have read that, but I knew of it. And so I just went to the bookstore and read all the ones that there were at that time, and I was speeding through them and just like laughing out loud on being you know, cross-legged at Barnes and Noble. And I was like, oh yeah, the this is this is my world, you know. Uh the goofiness, the heart, all of that, uh just instantly attracted me.

Maddie Orton 4:34

So oh, that's so great. There is a lot of heart, there is a lot of goofiness. The the way that I came to it, which I think is like so wild to me because this is, you know, my first kid. I didn't I didn't know that this is how things work. I guess it is. It was like passed around his pre-K, like like a mad magazine, sort of it would be, you know. He came home one day and said that he wanted this this book, this dogman book. And I asked these other parents, do you know what this is? And it was just this sort of, oh yeah, we know it bad dog. And it was like one kid had an older sibling who lent them dogman, and they used to have in this pre-K class where half the kids, more than half, don't even read yet, would sit around and like have, you know, dog man story time coffee clash where they'd like sit and read dogman together. And the teachers thought it was like the funniest thing they'd ever seen. It was, but it was fantastic. And now he'll go to bed and I'll hear him reading it out loud to himself and just laughing to himself for an audience of one. Yeah, it just really has that effect on these kids, they're just obsessed with it, and it is fun, I think, for adults too.

Brad Alexander 5:48

It is well, it makes sense that the little ones would would would gravitate toward it like pre-K, because as you now know, it's like story within a story. You know, George and Harold are kids themselves and pretty young when they when they start, you know, in the books creating the comics. And so like it's always through the lens uh and and and the artistry of of their hands and their mind. So like I think it immediately resonates with Tykes, even if they can't read, they're they're like there's there's there's something about it that like Dave has tapped into that like those little brains, I feel like are buzzing and kind of connecting. Because you can pick up like just the emotional content in the story by just like following the the visuals.

Maddie Orton 6:32

Yeah.

Brad Alexander 6:33

And then you learn to read and it's a it's a whole new world.

Kevin Del Aguila 6:36

I mean, that's the great thing about them is that they really are this gateway to reading. This, like, you know, because they're so funny, they're so vibrant, the characters are so like, you know, exciting and fun. It it really encourages kids to read. And so when we were putting the the show together, we were like, oh, this is perfect. This will be a gateway into the theater goers. Like, this will introduce these kids into being lifetime theater lovers, you know. So we really kind of took picked up Dave's Dave's idea and said, like, maybe we can expand this to the to the live.

Jen Wineman 7:12

That's right. And to that point, we really tried to, with the production, kind of engage kids in the same way that they're engaged when they're reading these books, and like really have our production really ask them to use their imaginations as they experience it, and also that they can look at it and it like the production, obviously, it's created by adults with training who are artisans, you know, but uh it's it's we want it to all look as though uh George and Harold created the entire show.

Maddie Orton 7:42

Oh, that's very cool.

Jen Wineman 7:43

Yeah, they can then go home and make their own costumes or create their own props because they can look at ours and say, Oh, oh, I see, I see. They went, you know, flippies, scary pinchers are just uh kitchen gloves with salad tongs attached to them. Now, they were designed and they're beautiful, and they're made by my wonderful artist, our costume designer Heidi Hansen is amazing. But kids can go home and see how they can recognize it on stage and then go home and do it for themselves. And and as the show has gotten really popular, and so many kids hear the soundtrack before they ever see the show, they'll often look things up online, see pictures of our production, and then come to the show in costumes that they've made at home.

Dog Man Cast 8:25

We took the head of the topic of the topic's head.

Maddie Orton 8:47

You adopted from several different dogman books. You have a lot of content to pull from. How did you develop the narrative for this? I mean, I guess you kind of have to tell the uh origin story of Dogman. I mean, Kevin, you wrote the book. How did you develop this as a show?

Kevin Del Aguila 9:03

Yeah, I mean, we really pulled from the first and third books. I think they were the they were the main ones that were out at the time that we were adapting the story. And I think we really leaned on the third one because it was when Petey clones himself and and creates Lil Petey, his you know, son/slash clone.

Maddie Orton 9:23

And for people who don't know, Petey is the bad cat who has a lovely kid cat. Lil Petey, who's who's quite nice, actually.

Kevin Del Aguila 9:33

Right. Petey is the world's most evilist cat, but Lil Petey is the world's most optimistic, lovable cat you'll ever meet. So yeah, they that relationship was really where the heart was. And so we, I think it that spoke to us, you know, most for adapting it for the stage. We were like, oh, there's a lot of heart in that relationship. And uh, so we took a lot from that. But just Dogman himself, you know, the real trick was that Dave Pilke gave us a lot of leeway. He said, You can do whatever you want, I'll come and watch it, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it. We thought, oh my gosh, he's giving us the keys to the college.

Maddie Orton 10:09

Wow, that is very generous.

Kevin Del Aguila 10:10

This is crazy, this is crazy here. But the one thing he insist upon, insisted upon, was that dog man, as he does in the books, can't speak.

Maddie Orton 10:21

This was my question. He has the head of a dog. So your titular character, that's right, your protagonist in our big musical, in a big musical, yeah, where one where one often might sing and and speak, does that he couldn't sing his inner monologue either.

Kevin Del Aguila 10:39

Like there couldn't really no convention, you know, and he could make dog sounds with notes behind them, but not language.

Maddie Orton 10:49

And so he is, for those who might not know, he is a police dog and a policeman who were put together and saved into a dog man body, dog head, man, body. So, how did you work around that? What did you do?

Kevin Del Aguila 11:08

Well, the the the main idea that we had is like just like the books, we're following the the design of the books, George and Harold created this comic dog man, and that's what that's what you're reading. So we thought, okay, we'll start with George and Harold, and they'll be adapting their comic to a musical. So it's really the musical is them in this very DIY way that Jen talked about, grabbing stuff from their garage and their house and put and basically writing this musical in front of our eyes. So they're creating the dogman musical as it happens. And that gave us a little bit of leeway to have them kind of speak for dogman in a certain way, or have, you know, um little Petey can understand when Dogman, you know, barks or howls or, you know, like Alassian to me down the well type thing. Yeah, exactly. And what we really learned was that you don't need dogman to speak. Like an actor can really express a lot on stage when they're pretending to be a half man, half dog. And um, and it's more fun actually to have them uh do that. So they get their point across. The the actor, we know exactly what dogman is thinking and feeling at every moment. Um, and it's great to watch.

Jen Wineman 12:22

So the kids really connect with dogman.

Kevin Del Aguila 12:24

Oh, yeah.

Jen Wineman 12:25

We were curious when we first started working on this, like if this character's not speaking or singing, are the kids gonna love him the way they love him in the book? And the answer is yes, because you know, you just channel all that doggy energy through your face and your body and out to your fingertips, and there he is.

Maddie Orton 12:41

Well, what I was most interested in when I saw that Dogman had been adapted into musical is how you created the world of the show because Dave Pilke's work is super specific, as you know, and you know, for anybody who isn't familiar, it's comic style drawing in this graphic novel, sometimes creative spelling, silly names. He breaks the fourth wall through through George and Harold. He crosses words out. Sometimes it sort of like lets you see the behind the scenes, like the how it's made, essentially. And I was wondering if there were sort of a little bit like you're talking about with you know, using the convention of the kids creating the musical, how did you pull from that homespun vibe to create that world? I know you talked a little bit about the costumes. What else sort of adds to that? What did you call it? The pilkyverse? What adds to that pilky verse vibe uh in the musical?

Brad Alexander 13:41

Jen should answer this, but or uh at uh at the very least. But I I want to throw it, I'm glad you're asking this because I wanted to throw up a compliment to Jen and and the whole creative team because it's a DIY vibe, but they struck this really beautiful balance play. It doesn't feel cheap. Like it looks fabulous. Like the show just when we were at the Lortel, uh, and then again at New World Stages, like it just the lighting, the set, it was a spectacle. It was it was it was visually really sort of like multicolor fabulousness on stage. It really was really terrific. Um, and yet it felt like they were grabbing stuff off the shelf. You know, so you guys struck a great balance with that. So it feels it feels it feels like low end and and high end at the same time.

Jen Wineman 14:30

Well, that was that was something that was really important because kind of the brief that we got from Theaterworks in the beginning was like, you know, their shows tore all over the place, and they tore to places that have a ton of technical support, but also sometimes to a place where they're performing in a cafetorium where it's just like gym lights. And so we wanted to make our show be as flexible as possible so that it could really go in anywhere, whether or not there are smoke machines and expensive sound systems and disco balls and all the lighting that that you know I'm used to having, you know, when I do a professional show. So it really had to like work in a rehearsal room with fluorescent lights. And and that was a particular challenge. And one of the things that I I'm particularly proud of is the when the buildings come to life. In book three, you know, Flippy makes uh the buildings get sprayed with living spray. And then she uh I always say she for Flippy because a female actor plays Flippy. Also, gender is a construct. Um, so Flippy uh, you know, entrances the buildings to do her evil bidding, and suddenly, you know, then little Petey in a cat suit has to battle them.

Maddie Orton 15:39

So how do you such a massive undertaking to do? I'm like imagining what it looks like in the books and how you would do this on stage.

Jen Wineman 15:47

Well, when we did our first little workshop with nothing, I I just said, can I have as much cardboard as you can give me and uh box cutters? And we wound up creating a way for like the actors to wear the buildings. You know, the buildings are just basically a piece of a rectangle of cardboard folded in half that are painted in the style of the show, but of the books, but they have little punch-outs where then the actors can put their arms through and wear the buildings and have scary arms like the buildings do in the books and make scary faces. And, you know, I thought to myself, well, one day when we have all the money and all the tech, we'll obviously have the buildings be a different thing. But actually, it feels really exciting. And we have, we took, I remember a whole eight-hour rehearsal that we spent just staging the building battle. Oh my gosh. And now I can teach it in like 20 minutes, but it's it took so long to kind of figure out how do we make this feel like an epic thing when we've got this actress in a suit that's a ball with like dryer tubing for arms, basically inside a yoga ball that we've cut out the head off of her head. It's like so easily could have felt like nothing, but we just like really tried to engage all of our imaginations to make it feel like something. And I and I think that that's part of why the kids love it. Because, you know, now that the show has the nice touring budget and it has it travels with lighting and and all those things, those like really just add to it. But it felt exciting in the rehearsal room with nothing. And I honestly think that's the key to creating exciting theater just generally, is does it work in the rehearsal room with just asking the audience for to use their imaginations? And if the answer to that can be yes, then it's just gonna be even better when you add the tech to it.

Dog Man Cast 17:30

I'm an evil scoundrel kissy, coughing and physical.

Maddie Orton 17:38

I was wondering too about the characters because after you created this, there's the 2025 DreamWorks film brings these characters to life on screen, but you're sort of, you had not really heard these characters speak out loud, right? I mean, I feel like that's a weird thing to say because it's a book. I have a very vivid sense of what they sound like in my brain, but then I realized that's actually just what they sound like to me. How did you figure out what they sound like? Were you all on the same page?

Kevin Del Aguila 18:09

No, it was hilarious. Like the the you I didn't realize that because as you're saying, when you're reading the books, you hear them in your head. Sure. And you assume this is what they sound like, this is exactly who they are. And I didn't really realize that until the actor who played Petey came in and started doing a Brooklyn accent. And I was like, and I was like, what, what Petey's Pete's like this this New Yorky kind of cat? And he was like, that's what I heard.

Jen Wineman 18:36

Because that's how he'd read it to his cat.

Kevin Del Aguila 18:37

Is that how he would read it to his kid out loud? And I was like, Well, actually, I heard him more as this like mad scientist kind of guy, blah, blah, blah. So like it was very interesting. And and um, I think what we learned was that like the sensibility, like what Jen is speaking to is like, as long as the silhouette, you know, of the characters looked right, as long as the the feel of the characters look right, this this kind of pilky sensibility, as long as we captured all of that, you know, the audience will go along with it. You know, the guy on stage may not sound like the the cat I heard in my head, but I recognize him. That is him, you know, and and I feel it. So it was fun watching the kids kind of like literally watch these characters come to life in front of them, you know, and accepting right away that's Flippy, oh, that's dog man, oh, that's Chief, you know. Uh it was it was great to see them respond so you know, responding so positively, you know, in that way to all of it.

Creating the musical sound of "Dog Man"

Maddie Orton 19:34

And then Brad, musically speaking, how are you figuring out genre-wise what this is?

Brad Alexander 19:41

We still haven't. We still haven't. Um we don't we don't we don't know, we don't we don't know if we have something here, actually. Um uh no we were gonna ask you. Yeah, exactly.

Maddie Orton 19:54

I'll defer to my six-year-old. I'll I'll let you know.

Brad Alexander 19:57

Please, please do. Yeah, I mean, I think I think that um I would say like if I had to summarize it, and Kevin, tell me if I'm way off here, but it felt like it's like swashbuckling adventure meets like pop rock, you know. Cool, you know, Dave in the books, he's clearly a child of like the late 70s, 80s. Like he makes references to like, you know, the Hall and Oates building as one of the buildings that that ends up coming to life. And like he throws in little little chestnuts of like pop culture references that kind of clued us in, like, okay, I think, I think we're I think we're we're we're swimming in the same water here. Like, this is gonna be a kind of a pop rock driving score that occasionally gets symphonic uh and a little cinematic, and that's what we kind of tried to do. And then like we would like nod to certain genres uh from time to time. In I'm back, where uh Flippy like comes to life in in act two, right? We sort of do like a kind of like James Brown meets Hollow Notes kind of a thing.

Dog Man Cast 21:13

Don't hold out, I'm a busy real estate model. Sounds like a great score.

Kevin Del Aguila 21:18

I mean, the fun of it was that like again, we took you know the clue from from Pilke that like, you know, as Brad says, he puts in all of these adult references in his in his books, you know, like that only adults would get. That like, yeah, 80HD. The number 80, the number is the robot. Um, I think the school that like um the kids go to is Jerome Howard Elementary, which is like the real name of Curly from the Three Stooges. Like all of all the only these little like things that you're like, that's not for kids. He's he's like making himself laugh. And if you get the reference, like great, you know, you're in. And um, so I think we took like a pair. out of that where we were like, you know, we had like a love song where um Petey, the evil cat, is suddenly missing his clone. So we were like, well, this has to be some like love song about like missing your clone. And so the love song is basically I love me. And you know Brad was like, let's make this like a Christopher Cross kind of love song. You know, kids won't get it, but the adults will feel it. You know, we were like, yeah, absolutely, totally.

Jen Wineman 22:25

So and then I begged you to put in the like 90s slow jam talking section. Yes we totally put in like the best gift I could ever have been given by any writers.

Brad Alexander 22:35

No that was a great call test. Thank you for that. I think that I think that really took it to another level.

Maddie Orton 22:40

I think all musicals should have that. I'm here for that.

Brad Alexander 22:43

Absolutely.

Maddie Orton 22:44

So what did Dave Pilke think of the final product? How did that all go?

Kevin Del Aguila 22:47

We were really nervous when he came to to the to the workshop. We were like oh I hope this uh I hope he enjoys it but he laughed and he cried and he became a huge supporter and fan of the show.

Maddie Orton 23:03

Oh fantastic.

Kevin Del Aguila 23:04

It was amazing. It was incredible. He's the nicest nicest guy and it was like a gift to to just like be able to entertain him.

Jen Wineman 23:12

And sometimes he would come to the show and like do like signing sessions or talkbacks with the kids. And then sometimes he'd come with his baseball cap and sunglasses and just watch the show in you know and see you know he he loved it at that time he said it was like his one of his favorite versions of anything he'd ever done.

Brad Alexander 23:29

And that's his experience was like a screen like TV film and like you know okay Dave we're we're we're sending you a copy or like you can you know download a copy of the first iteration and oh okay cool and then you know you have a Zoom call. Like here he's in the room and like when we were rehearsing at the time at Chelsea Studios the studio was such that like Jen needed the pretty much the whole space to simulate you know the stage area and then there was like only enough room as it always is at Chelsea for like two very tight rows of seats you know with like some kids parents like the creative team and Dave and so you're if you're in the front row like of the dogman is howling in your face dogman is right in your face and you are right there. And I think it was a really like immersive raw kind of like vulnerable intimate moment for him and the cast there you know he's still he's in their face and they're in his face and it and you know in the beginning it's the first few minutes you're like okay is this how it's going to be wow this is very assaulting and then you just kind of like in it together having an experience and I think he was very moved as Kevin said by the whole thing.

Kids get to see Dog Man on stage—and they're howling in the aisles

Kevin Del Aguila 24:46

And you know his his his big thing is creativity and imagination. Like that that's that's where all of this stems from this just like you know love of of of that. And I think that's what he really recognized and responded to is that like the whole show is about creativity. It's about making your own thing and and and you know um creating something out of nothing. And so I think it it really spoke to him and it speaks to the kids that way too. They go home and they and they they remember these songs that like I so many people have said to me they're like my kid is singing your song in in my kitchen right now like I don't know how he remembered all those words but here he is doing it. And so it's it's it's really exciting to watch watch it inspire kids like that.

Maddie Orton 25:31

Well yeah I guess that's my that's my last question is maybe maybe not equally to to Dave Pilke's opinion but certainly close to that what did your kids think of the show? And then what is the first set of kid audience members how did they react because I mean they are notoriously the most honest audience members that you can get and it's IP that they love.

Brad Alexander 25:52

Like how did you know that you hit the mark I just want to say we we got to do a cast album for Dogman which Theatreworks doesn't always do I don't I don't even know how many cast I think it's only done like they like Lightning Thief and Dogman and Cat Kid I think just a few. It kind of depends on the year and budget and so forth. So so what's cool is the kids all have already heard in in many many cases the the cast album and are into that because just the show hasn't hit their city or town or whatever yet so you know we'll we'll go like when we were in um even like even in New York when it was like revived in New York the cast album had been out for a while so kids are coming in knowing all the tunes and when they get to that point in the show they they just start standing up and like dancing and singing every word and it's it's exhilarating that was different because the first time we did it I mean my kid I was worried just about my kid and like you know Brad's kid and like the guy playing Petey his his his kid was there and we were just like my son was like don't screw this up but they were they I mean they're so they're all sitting in the you know in the audience all the kids are sitting in the audience with the book in their lap you know just watching and and you think like we we better not mess this up they they are you know they want to see what they want to see.

Kevin Del Aguila 27:16

And so it was really gratifying that they were like responding in all the right places. I mean sometimes they'd be like that's not the line in the book that's not what he says you know something that we would change um but for the most part they they ran with it and they cheered in in all the right places and when like ADHD appears they all go that's adh that's adh you know like they're really eager to to point out you know all the great things they see happening on yeah they love to go why why why they love to do that along with Loki.

Maddie Orton 27:48

Well guys thank you so much I can't believe I'm having this much fun talking about a kid's graphic novel but I really could talk with you guys about this for quite some time I'm a fan myself so it's a pleasure. Well thank you we obviously can talk about it for hours thank you so much for creating something so exciting and special that get kids really pumped about theater. I'm into it. Thank you. Thanks to Brad Alexander, Kevin Delagula and Jen Moyman for joining me. Dogman the musical will play at Bergen Pack on March 21st and State Theater New Jersey on March 22nd. For more information on the show visit stnj.org or bergenpack.org. If you liked this episode be sure to give us a review, subscribe, and tell your friends. A transcript of this podcast as well as links to related content and more about the arts in New Jersey can be found on jerseyarts.com. The JerseyArts podcast is presented by Art Pride New Jersey, advancing a state of creativity since 1986. The show is co-founded by and currently supported by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. This episode was hosted, produced and edited by yours truly Maddie Orton. Executive producers are Jim Atkinson and Isaac Cerna Diaz. Special thanks to State Theater New Jersey I'm Matty Orton for the Jersey Arts Podcast. Thanks for listening