Doonesbury (musical): History and Key Facts

Doonesbury, also known as Doonesbury: A Musical Comedy, is a 1983 musical with a book and lyrics by Garry Trudeau and music by Elizabeth Swados.

Based on Trudeau's comic strip of the same name, it served to change the format of the strip from an episodic satire of college campus life that existed on a floating timeline to a more character driven, serialized political cartoon series in which characters changed, aged, and died, while still retaining a satirical political bent. Notably, the play depicts the core cast of characters—perpetually twenty-something undergraduates for the first twelve years of the strip's run—graduating college.

Trudeau took a nearly two-year sabbatical from writing the comic strip to develop the project.

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