The Keegan Theatre is currently staging the world premiere of Midiculous, a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure play geared toward middle school audiences. Midiculous was created by renowned DC writing duo Drew Anderson and Dwayne Lawson-Brown, best known for the popular Keegan productions From Gumbo to Mumbo and Push the Button. This innovative Choose-Your-Own-Adventure production puts audiences in the driver’s seat of various middle school scenarios (including TikTok shenanigans and a potential food fight!), allowing them to decide the outcomes through a unique game show format. Led by the manipulative guide, Perplexa, and an eccentric Game Show Host, middle school students L’Apostrophe Johnson, MC, Jacques Le Jock, Ty Tryhard, and Lateshia Darkheart must navigate an array of situations whose outcomes are chosen by the audience.
The play was commissioned by Keegan’s Boiler Room Series initiative for new works, as well as Keegan’s education program, PLAY-RAH-KA. DC Theater Arts’ Julia Tucker spoke with Anderson and Lawson-Brown about the play and their creative process behind it. This interview has been edited for clarity, length, and flow.
Julia Tucker: How did you come up with the idea for Midiculous?
Dwayne Lawson-Brown: Midiculous came from a want to do a few things. We had this idea of doing a sort of improv-inspired thing, and we knew that we wanted to engage middle school students. We worked with a few different schools to speak to close to 100 middle school students and get their feedback on things that matter to them. This was right after the election, so students were talking about things like immigration, the TikTok ban, and all these things … some things that are very major in adult life and just life in general … and some things that felt very particular to youth and their middle school experience. We wanted to try to capture all of that energy.
Drew Anderson: Right on. It’s all these different scenes, because Dwayne and I bonded over a lot of different pop culture things that we connected on, such as video games and hip-hop. We came up together watching The Chappelle Show. We used to be over at my place looking at The Chappelle Show, and we both went to Key & Peele and just that whole sketch thing. Right around when we were starting to write Midiculous, we also saw Dance Like There’s Black People Watching by Second City, and we were turned on by that whole way you could have all these different scenes and skits that weren’t necessarily connected, but overall spoke to an energy and to different situations that people really go through. We ended up doing kind of a blend, because these characters came up as we were creating and writing our sketches, and we found a way to have a throughline with characters who showed up and grew.
How did you work with the process of creating a show specifically for middle school audiences and catering to this age group?
Drew Anderson: So the way that we write … I call it the Bugs Bunny formula. We write stuff that’s for young people, but at the same time, it’s for us. We’re young at heart, but we have to have those winks and nods. It’s different layers of things going on, and that’s the way we write. We sat down and wrote a play for young people, but it still had all these mature themes, because this was us responding to cancel culture and different things that were going on during quarantine. We worked it into something that was going to be cool for kids because it was about this other world of superheroes and villains, and it was so colorful and fun and crazy that it actually was appropriate for kids despite these adult themes. It’s taking the world kids know, but creating a really absurd version of it.
Dwayne Lawson-Brown: I think there are two core things that happened with this play. We took the absurdity of the real world and amplified that absurdity. Middle school is a pretty ridiculous time in your life, and so how do we amplify that and take that to the next level? There were three things that happened. There was amplifying the absurdity, doing the interviews with the middle school students, and trusting the intelligence of young people. They are intelligent folks who are navigating tough issues. We bring that humility of being able to listen and learn from folks, and we celebrate that humanity by sharing these narratives and trusting that their narrative is worth being shared.
I know that Midiculous is a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure format, so what were the greatest challenges of working with that format?
Drew Anderson: When you’re writing a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure play, you kind of have to write every scene that has a choice in it twice, so it helps if you like writing. I feel like the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure thing was a late idea. The choices, the idea to have choices in the scenes, came after we developed the characters, because we weren’t going to have consistent characters at first.
Dwayne Lawson-Brown: Choices were always present, because initially we had the improv idea, and the improv proved to be a little bit too much. We had to break down options, and that’s where we got to, oh, it could be like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book.
Drew Anderson: I just saw the play, and I was talking to the actors about the challenge of doing a play where the whole play might be different. You have to have all these different scenes and different versions ready, and then the crew has to be ready for the different things that are going to pop up based on the decisions. I told them, “I commend you all, because I’m asking you to do something that I’ve never done. I wrote two versions of all these scenes, but I’ve never had to be in a play where you have to be ready to do whichever version of this scene they ask for, and it’s challenging.”
What do you think audiences will take away from the show, and why should they come experience it?
Dwayne Lawson-Brown: I think that audiences will leave the show with a better understanding of the young people in their lives and an appreciation for how challenging but fun life can be across the board. I think that young audiences will feel reflected and learn that there is a place for them in whatever space that they claim and choose to be a part of, and I think that adults will leave the show saying, “Oh, I remember those days. Maybe I should have more grace for the young people in my life.”
Drew Anderson: For me, it’s about the conversations that come. My favorite audience for this is multi-generational. I just came from seeing it with kids from one of the Center City Schools and Perry Street Prep, and earlier in the week, I saw it with Inspired Teaching. When they make a choice, they’re yelling, they’re so into it. It’s crazy, it’s like a real game show. I like that energy, but what I really want is those multi-generational audiences. I’ve seen one. That multi-generational audience is different — they choose differently. You can see adults with their kids, and they’re talking about, “Hey, this is something I went through, what does that look like for you? Who are you in here? Were you not in here?” That’s what excites me. That’s my favorite audience for this, that mixed audience, because it’s different, and you start seeing these intergenerational bridges forming. That’s what I’m here for.
I know you both have written works for Keegan Theatre and other organizations before. How did the journey of creating this show differ from your previous experiences? Tell me about the process of creating a new show for DC audiences.
Drew Anderson: From Gumbo to Mumbo was mostly stuff that we had. We’ve known each other for 25 years now, but it was a lot of our best poetry and raps and all that stuff. But that was a different kind of writing. It was putting together things we already had, and adding some new things that were just for the show. Push the Button was a different kind of fun — we would just be wacky. We had just come out of the pandemic, which was so trying in so many ways, but especially socially. This was, “Okay, we’re going to make fun of how ridiculous a lot of this stuff has been, just with the way that people have treated each other.” With this, the process of writing Midiculous was different, because you’ve got all these different choices. Also, anything we do generally is going to have hip-hop in it. It’s, like, basically a hip-hop musical and poetry. I think a capital should be very representative of everything that’s in the country. That’s hard to do with a country that’s as diverse and has as much going on as America. DC has some of all of that in here.
Dwayne Lawson-Brown: Our city is a microcosm of the entire country. The challenge with this was to really re-embrace our middle school experience and have empathy for the young people that are navigating this particular middle school experience. We spoke with students who, at any moment, could potentially have parents yanked out of their house. We wrote this play while in a great sense of uncertainty for some of our personal day jobs, not knowing if funding would still exist for the arts. It feels good to know that Midiculous is resonating with audiences. I taught for a long time in DC schools, and some of my former students now have kids that are in middle school. I’m getting text messages from their parents like, “Hey, my kid just saw your play,” and saying all these good things. Those are the types of things that really feed us. Drew taught in high schools and is still a teaching artist across the district. Being able to have those moments happen and be reflected in your work, that’s a joy.
Drew Anderson: Right to that, when you mentioned the connections of people you know, and their kids seeing the play, Tuesday was the first show, and it was with Inspired Teaching [a DC public charter school]. I was there, and I was sitting behind students who are in my after-school program. They didn’t know that it was my play. At the end, they called the cast back out to have a talkback, and they called me down to the stage, and my students were like, “Mr. Drew!” Later that day, I saw my students after school at the program, and we were talking about the play. It’s just funny how small the world is and how small DC can feel, but I love those connections. I love that if you’ve been doing art in DC long enough, you’re going to have those stories. You’re going to have those crossings of streams, and in this case with Midiculous, I hope it’s an intentional intergenerational blend that can build some bridges for conversation and understanding.
Tell me more about what audiences can expect from the unique format and experience.
Dwayne Lawson-Brown: Expect a lot of laughs. I think this may be the funniest show that we’ve written. This play is democracy in action because your choice truly matters to the show’s outcome. That’s the best I can give without giving anything away.
Midiculous plays through March 8th at The Keegan Theatre, 1742 Church St NW, Washington, DC. Performances are Tuesdays–Fridays at 10:00 am, Saturdays at 8:00 pm, and Sundays at 3:00 pm. Tickets ($30 for adults and $20 for students/seniors) can be purchased online. More information is available at www.keegantheatre.com.
