ARCHIE'S WEIRD PARODY is a rock musical about suburbia, conforming, and changing your fate, even if you’re a character trapped in a comic book. Fans of meta stories, Riverdale, and Archie Comics will be thrilled.
ARCHIE'S WEIRD PARODY follows Jughead, after realizing that he is trapped in a doomed narrative, destined to repeat. He discovers Archie Comics is keeping him and the Archie gang captive, and the only way out is to stop the killing of Jason Blossom -- the inciting incident on Riverdale, the television show
So, with help from Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Cheryl, he adventures through the story to try to stop Jason's murder, and escape the comic book. But with a guilty audience that is always watching, can anyone ever really escape?
With a rock musical theater score including songs such as "Suburbia," "Life is Life," "Something's Wrong With Jughead," and many more, ARCHIE'S WEIRD PARODY is a love letter to Riverdale, Archie Comics, and everyone who has ever wondered what happens when the curtain falls, and if we demand more before it does.
ARCHIE'S WEIRD PARODY played a SOLD OUT show at Don't Tell Mama NYC on 11/11/22 and ran from 01/13/23 - 01/29/23 Off-Broadway at Theatre Row
CREATING ARCHIE’S WEIRD PARODY AND THE TITULAR TRANS CHARACTER
To start, what is Archie’s Weird Parody?
Klein: Archie’s Weird Parody is a rock musical about the characters of Archie trying to escape a pre-written story. It’s about suburbia, conforming, and wanting more for yourself. It explores the safety of suburbia for marginalized people, especially if that suburbia is in an unchanging comic book. Jughead takes the lead in a quest to understand what it means to break out of a mold, while the rest of the Archie gang go on their own journeys to better understand themselves and the town that they live in.
Raymond: It’s a story about storytelling, and about what gets lost or added when certain people tell stories. It’s about the Archie characters discovering and claiming their autonomy and individuality by becoming their own authors.
Nell, how did you get all this from Archie and Riverdale?
Klein: Until 1989, the Comics Code Authority would not bear the CCA seal, showing a comic was approved under the code, and in turn “appropriate” and “worthwhile” to be sold if a character seen as morally good was also seen as queer. Pure censorship! I love Archie and Riverdale, and as I learned more about both, it became clear to me that this wasn’t just censorship of what might’ve been, but censorship of what (to me) clearly already was. I saw clear queer narratives hidden in the pages of Archie Comics, and I myself yearned for the freedom of these characters. So in the spirit of anti-censorship, I wrote a show about these characters talking out loud about their queer identities, and talking out loud about what it means to be people of color in suburbia.
Max, you play Archie Andrews. Is he queer in Archie’s Weird Parody?
Raymond: Yes. Since the first version of the show, the focal point of Archie’s journey has been the tension between the romantic desire he’s expected to have for Betty and the romantic desire he actually has for Jughead. That journey is what initially drew me to the...