Synopsis
Years after interviewing accused serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Dr. Judy Matthewson remains haunted by the case. As a forensic psychologist, she has spent her career searching for the causes of violence and abuse in the brain, sifting through the dark corners of human depravity with scientific detachment. But John’s story is different. It is an abyss she cannot cross. The Doctor believes the case still holds secrets buried in its wreckage.
Convinced she missed something during her interviews with John, she reopens the case in her mind. What follows is a fever dream of blurred memories, fractured personalities, psychological manipulation, monstrous acts, and shifting perspectives. John’s story conjures images of his childhood, adult life, murders, and arrest, blurring the boundaries between reality, memory, and a troubled psyche. He embodies contradiction: family man, community leader, outgoing neighbor, and part-time clown, but also a violent criminal and unreliable narrator who claims to have multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder. Answers do not come easily, and John has ulterior motives.
As the Doctor digs deeper, John’s story begins to resonate with long-buried trauma from her own past. The scientific objectivity she has relied upon begins to collapse, and she becomes both investigator and subject. John gradually transforms from the recognizable figure drawn from true events into a symbolic presence she must confront on her own journey. He comes to embody the lingering weight of violence, memory, and the human need to understand what cannot be understood.
Crawlspace is not a procedural. It is a theatrical experience that moves through the hidden recesses of the human mind, the enigmatic edges of sanity, the dangers of detachment, and the risks of obsession. It transforms a true crime story into a meditation on the legacies of trauma that echo through time, where the search for light may be the only hope for healing.
From the Author...
When I considered adapting the story of the Gacy case into a musical, I knew I didn’t want to write a true crime procedural. The story has been dramatized this way many times already. Matt and I were determined that our show should rise above the source material and present themes that are more timeless and transcendent- that it should honor victims without exploiting them. We wanted to reframe the case and transform the true crime genre into something meaningful. That's what we attempted with Crawlspace.
Setting out, we understood this show wasn't going to be for everyone- it would be an experience a director, a cast, and patrons would all have to want and be ready for. That said, we sincerely believed the story could have new power if told in a different way. We were determined to give our adaptation a purpose beyond a mere retelling.
A major goal was not to be sensationalist or to glorify the criminal or his crimes, but to use this recognizable figure, this symbol of the darkest, most terrifying form of human nature, as a vehicle to pose universal questions about trauma, abuse, identity, community, apathy, and the nature and origin of evil.
I imagined it as something on the scale of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, but with a twist. In place of giant, other-worldly monsters that inspire fear of the unknown and unthinkable, forcing us to contemplate our insignificant place in a vast, unfeeling universe and to question its very nature, there is an unremarkable, middle-aged handyman who incites all of those same things.
The Origin
I first had the idea for what would become Crawlspace in the summer of 2011 when I happened upon the book Defending a Monster by Judge Sam Amirante, John Wayne Gacy’s original defense attorney, whom I was fortunate to interview during my research. While I was already somewhat familiar with the Gacy story, reading about the details surrounding it affected me deeply- the unthinkable loss, the unspeakable cruelty, the inherited trauma, the cyclical nature of violence and abuse, the range of human duplicity, and the cold indifference of our society.
I soon became lost in the past, reading everything I could find about the case and struggling to reconcile the contradictions of the serial murderer at its center with the lives shattered by the waves of destruction that radiated outward from his crimes. In truth, I became obsessed.
At the same time, I had just started a songwriting collaboration with my long-time cowriter, composer Matt Glickstein. The two of us had been considering writing an original musical and had been waiting for the right story idea to materialize. By chance, the search for the right story and my obsession with a decades-old true crime case converged and spawned an unlikely project that would occupy my imagination for a decade. We got started almost immediately. I created an outline, complete with song titles, and we used that as a blueprint to piece the show together.
By late 2012, most of the songs had been written, and the bones of the script were established. However, the next year, I started a new career, Matt became a parent, and our unorthodox musical was set aside for several years. During the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, we found ourselves with unexpected free time to revisit and refine the material. What ultimately became an eleven-year journey was, in reality, two one-year periods of writing and development separated by a years-long hiatus.
In 2022, eleven years after I first had the idea for the musical, Crawlspace received its premiere production at Tennessee Tech University under the talented direction of Mark Creter, whom I will forever be grateful to for giving such a bizarre concept a chance and showing people that “it’s not what you might think.”
Why a musical?
Simple: the narrative of the case read like a dark opera- almost too unbelievable to be true- but devastatingly human and unlike opera, undeniably American. The elements were theatrical. Its very structure suggested music- a Greek chorus of neighbors, tragic figures trapped in a metaphorical spider’s web, complex familial relationships, duplicity, fractured identity, and a cat-and-mouse detective story. At its center, the most enigmatic, over-the-top, contradictory man (a literal clown) who seemed to have been plucked from the pages of a novel. But he was real. One of us.
As I initially studied the case, in my mind, I began to see it unfold on stage. I realized it was rich and fertile ground for a bigger story, one that might reach beyond the true crime narrative- though it would take the long hiatus between writing sessions for me to fully unlock how this might be accomplished.
The Doctor
The fictional forensic psychologist was part of the musical’s DNA from day one- early on, only referred to as “The Doctor.” However, in the 2020 writing sessions, she became the focal point of the book and got a name: Judy Matthewson.
Matt and I had written a stand-alone, unrelated song called “Stone by Stone” about the process of moving from trauma or depression toward self-healing and self-acceptance- how it can be a slow process of searching and reflection, sifting through rubble, before finding a breakthrough. Matt suggested that, with some adaptation, it could be a good fit for Crawlspace as a way to further flesh out the Doctor’s character.
I agreed, and it changed the musical significantly. “Stone by Stone” and its musical motif are now woven throughout the score, binding the fever dream sequences together. I also credit Matt’s mother, Judy (the Doctor’s namesake), who graciously spent time talking with me about the character and walking through her motivations and emotions.
Dr. Matthewson became the key to inviting the audience into the fluid, liminal psychological space that is explored on stage- the protagonist who stands against John’s false protagonist posturing. She is the heart of the story, a wounded healer who journeys deep into a symbolic hell constructed from her own memories, traumas, guilt, insecurities, and uncertainties- searching for answers and, perhaps unknowingly, for healing.
What transpires on stage is a manifestation of her psyche- her emotional journey. John Wayne Gacy is a mere phantom there. A memory from her past that morphs into something more symbolic, even cosmic, as the journey reaches its climax. In a way, she and John are different sides of the same coin- both victims of generational trauma; he perpetuated it on others, she on herself.
She has the opportunity to break the cycle, and that realization sets her at a crossroads. John becomes an amalgamation of everything she must face, accept, and overcome to move forward.
In the initial production, the script toyed with perception- whose eyes are we seeing this through? In retrospect, this was left too ambiguous, and while the premiere was a great success, it needed more clarity. By the second production, staged by the Ensemble Theatre of Chattanooga, the Doctor’s status and perspective were more firmly established. ETC’s creative director was integral in helping me with those refinements.
Legacy
Spoiler Alert: If you'd rather experience Crawlspace without knowing where the story ultimately leads, you may want to come back and read this after seeing the show.
For a long time, I struggled with finding the right ending for the Doctor’s journey. I was emphatic that the show's final moments must remain ambiguous. I thought that giving such a story a “happy ending,” with every plot point wrapped up neatly, seemed disingenuous and perhaps even disrespectful to reality.
The premiere production featured a rather dark finale where Dr. Matthewson descends into the crawlspace, still searching for answers- basically looping back to the beginning of the show. The second production with ETC was more open-ended, with the Doctor sitting alone at her interview table surrounded by the ghosts of her past mingled with those from John’s story.
It wasn’t until working with New Zealand director Arron Tindell in 2025 that, under his urging, I devised the current ending, which is what it always should have been. The Doctor sits down at the interview table surrounded by a star field- points of light representing the victims whose illumination transcends their individual stories and lives on. They have become the means of navigation in her work, replacing the darkness.
Finally moving on- scars and all, she calls for the next patient, her first in many years. The wounded healer is finally back at work. Free from her obsession. Changed.
In so many ways, the Doctor is me.
We’re all victims. But there’s more than darkness. Her healing is rooted in science. Mine in stories.
Jason Spraggins
8/5/2026