Percy Jackson (Musical)

As a huge fan of The Lightning Thief musical, Irvin decided (when seeing it yet again) to pay homage to the musical's version of Percy. Fortunately, an intrepid fan had already found the specific shirt Percy wears at American Eagle, so Irvin knew where to start. He threw in a new wig, the jacket, and a new sword to match the one in the show. The big ticket item was the winged shoes of Luke's, which Irvin wanted to light up in blue to pay homage to Chris McCarrell's shoes at the opening night party. He figured there would be plenty of opportunities to wear such shoes in life.

The entire cast (and producer, and composer, and composer's family) knows Irvin by now, and they were all thrilled to see the new costume. Kristin Stokes (Annabeth) even took a Percabeth photo with him. The fans who were gathered at the stage door were in awe. Afterwards, Irvin walked around the city, receiving endless compliments on the shoes, to take pictures in front of the Empire State Building.

Irvin was asked to host Cosplay Night as part of a promotion the show ran in its final week, given that he's the show's foremost cosplayer and foremost online promoter at Hypable. Only too happy to oblige (since it meant seeing the show again), Irvin donned the Percy costume again. At the show, he met up with the other fan who's cosplayed the musical's characters, Meghan. They became fast friends and even took awesome Percabeth photos together, so Irvin was more than happy to award her as the winner of the Cosplay Contest.

That night, Irvin also realized just how stressful it is to work on social media, where he was "hosting" the Cosplay Night. The constant notifications are overwhelming! Irvin now has considerable respect for people in marketing in charge of social media; it's evidently not his calling.

When The Lightning Thief stopped at the Beacon Theater in NYC on its National Tour, Irvin reprised the outfit, and achieved his greatest feat of theatrical organizing to date when he got a group of seventeen people to go see the show with him. The costume was so convincing, outside the theater, many families wanted their little kids to take photos with him. Some girls asked him to sign a message to their friends from Percy - "she'll never know the difference!" And a little boy asked for him to sign the program, convinced that it was the actual Percy from the show - Irvin had to gently break it to him that he hadn't actually been in the show.

Irvin brought the costume out again the following September for the first time he saw The Lightning Thief on Broadway, very grateful that the costume had not changed since the Off-Broadway production!