“Dog Sees God,” the unauthorized continuation of the Peanuts characters in 1990s high school by Bert V. Royal, is the 14th and final production for Dr. Patrick Santoro, Theater and Performance Studies full professor and creative director. Dog Sees God was performed in Governor State University’s Sherman Hall April 3 – 6.
In the final performance of the play on Sunday, Santoro told the audience he had “a lovely time here at GSU for the last 13 years. I’m the founder of the Theater and Performance Studies program, and it is really a special time for you to be here with us as we celebrate this transition for myself but for this really wonderful work of art you are about to see.”
The production took the beloved Peanuts characters created by Charles Schulz into a dark, funny and painful time in life, high school in the 1990s. Santoro’s sound design of grunge and alternative rock and Ophena De La Rosa’s costume design take you back to this era of youth culture highlighting the music and clothing of the era.
The cast and crew were a mix of GovState students, faculty and staff along with members of the theater community. CB or Charlie Brown, played by GovState student Xavier Thompson, is grappling with the existential crisis of the death of his dog, Snoopy and confusion of adolescence with his sexuality when he finds comfort with loner and musician Beethoven (who is Schroeder in the original Peanuts comic strip) played by high school student Aldyn Kellogg.
Kellogg was a last minute addition to the cast of Dog Sees God when the original actor playing Beethoven left the play giving Kellogg less than two weeks to prepare for the part. To really highlight high school in the 1990s, the play has Tricia (Peppermint Patty) and Marcy playing mean girls who like to party, Van (Linus) is a stoner Buddhist, Van’s sister (Lucy) is committed to a mental hospital after setting fire to the red-hair little girl’s hair, Matt (Pig Pen) is a germaphobe bully and misogynist and good friends with CB, and CB’s sister (Sally) is a goth kid who has a one-woman show and currently has a crush on Beethoven. Beethoven is no longer friends with CB and the rest of the gang and is bullied and teased for being gay.
The standout character is CB’s sister, played by GovState TAPS student My’Anna Perdue who not only is the only character who has multiple costume changes to match her evolution as a person but she is still supportive of her brother and his questioning of life after the death of Snoopy and the high school scandal of kissing Beethoven in front of all his friends. CB’s sister is both comical and serious and her one-woman show of having a caterpillar turning into a platypus and not a butterfly is not only reflective the character not wanted to live by life’s expectation but can be read as a transgender story.
The play was full of laughs and the audience laughed along with and at the characters, but when things turned dark, dealing with issues of death, both the death of Snoopy and the suicide of Beethoven, the audience both let out unexpected gasps and silence. The final moment of the play, when CB who has being writing to his Pen Pal all his life but started again after the death of Snoopy finally receives the first response after all of these years is a moment of catharsis for the characters and the audience (a moment that resulted in some audience tears).
Santoro is proud of this play and feels this is a great play to be his final production for GovState. In the program he writes that “It has been a privilege to teach and direct and mentor such wonderful students,” and “I am grateful for this very special cast, the artistic team, and crew for their hard work. Thank you for making this journey worthwhile.”