INTERVIEW: ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ comes alive at ‘The Twenty-Sided Tavern’
Photo: Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern features, from left, Madelyn Murphy, DAGL, Tyler Nowell Felix and Diego F. Salinas. Photo courtesy of Bronwen Sharp / Provided by Vivacity Media Group with permission.
Dungeons & Dragons, the role-playing game that is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, has never been more popular. Thanks to the nostalgia machine that has taken over today’s culture — with an assist from Netflix’s Stranger Things — the game has found an audience of devotees who congregate on a regular basis to launch campaigns and explore new lands.
Now, D&D has come to the off-Broadway scene with Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern, playing through at least April 2025 at Stage 42 in Midtown Manhattan. This improvisational show depicts a campaign performed on an expansive theatrical stage, with lots of surprises along the way. The audience plays a key role in how the plot unfolds and what the members of the assembled party will do next. Oh, and it’s a hoot. Nothing is taken too seriously, and all are welcome to the Twenty-Sided Tavern.
Madelyn Murphy, who plays the Trickster in the production, is a self-described actor, improviser, event host and founding member of the theater company High Stakes Productions. She has been with the show over its many iterations, performing on stage in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Chicago.
“It is truly the most fun job in the world,” Murphy said in a recent phone interview. “It’s my job, but you forget because I’m having an absolute blast.”
The cast changes a lot, but right now Murphy can be seen on stage with Conner Marx, Alex Stompoly, Cassidy Sledge, Diego F. Salinas and Jasmin Malave. Plus, there are D&D celebrities who join the production for various performances. Murphy was part of the original brainstorming sessions on Zoom when the show hadn’t even been created yet.
“It was the first winter of the pandemic back at the end of 2020, and we just kind of all got thrown into this crazy Zoom call,” Murphy said. “I didn’t know anybody. ‘Hey, we’re trying to think about how to bring something like Dungeons & Dragons to a live theatrical show, mixed with Gamiotics, David Carpenter’s company.’ And that was truly two weeks of just after work we’d all hop on for an hour and just discuss ideas. And then flash forward a year, and they’re putting it up at a tiny little improv theater in New York. Flash forward another year, and suddenly it’s in Edinburgh, and then it’s in Chicago. And now we’re here, so it has been this crazy snowball effect that started as a Zoom call, which is crazy for me to think about four years ago.”
Carpenter is the executive producer of the show, in addition to being the technology designer and co-creator of The Twenty-Sided Tavern. One of the central technology feats of the show is that audience members participate by using their phones and directing the action on stage — sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. Murphy was completely enamored of Carpenter’s vision and the brainstorming process. She wanted in.
“I went to their very first show of it on its feet when it was bare-bones card tables,” she said. “I sat in the audience, and I went, ‘This is going to work, and I want to do it.’ Because just the idea of bringing a game and welcoming people into it, I think that was the nut to crack with this whole thing. And by virtue of the creators and having just this incredible tech that’s provided by Gamiotics, instead of watching people play a game, it made it that we’re all in this game together. And I immediately was like, ‘I need to do this.’ I went to talk to David Carpenter right then, and I went, ‘Please let me do this. Whenever you have auditions, whenever you have workshops, whatever I can do, I’d love to join.’”
Join she did, even though she had limited experience with D&D itself. Murphy is originally from Chicago, and she had played three sessions of a single campaign before joining The Twenty-Sided Tavern.
“So I had really not played it all, but I was always interested in it,” the actor admitted. “And then by becoming part of Twenty-Sided Tavern, that’s how I actually really learned how to play. … Studying up so I could do my job better, then I joined a campaign and would play every week for over a year when not doing the show, but what I loved is the show taught me how to play D&D. It made it accessible to my life.”
In fact, that accessibility quality of The Twenty-Sided Tavern is Murphy’s favorite quality of the production. All are welcome to the tavern, and that means novices and experts alike. She loves parents who bring their D&D-devoted children, and everyone leaves with a greater appreciation for the RPG.
“This is actually what I love about the show is that it was made by fans; it was created for the fans,” she said. “So there are those of us like myself who didn’t necessarily feel super-connected to D&D before getting involved in the show, but in watching it once, I was hook, line and sinker. And what is really cool is … the audience really drives the action, and so when there’s so much fandom happening and we have the flexibility through improv and through the tech itself to flex and essentially follow the fun that the audience is having, that is where it works. And I think the best endorsement I ever get is from the parents in the audience. My mom, bless her heart, I call her my secret understudy. She’s seen the show probably 40 times over the years, and she still doesn’t play D&D. But she has a great time every time because she knows that she is shaping the game and the show every time. So she feels autonomy and ownership over her participation, even if she couldn’t tell you what a death-saving throw is actually.”
Murphy added: “What we’re finding, too, is my favorite audience interactions are when parents are bringing their kids. Typically it’s the kids’ favorite activity, and this is the way for the parent to connect with their child. They’ll sometimes be nervous and be like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve never played.’ We go, ‘We got you.’”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern is currently playing through April 2025 at Stage 42 in Midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
