Bert V. Royal’s Dark Comedy revisits the “Peanuts” Gang as Volatile Young Adults
Madison, WI – To launch its 2019-2020 season, Wisconsin’s premiere LGBTQ+ theatre company, StageQ, presents Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, Bert V. Royal’s adolescent interpretation of the “Peanuts” kids from October 4-19, 2019 at the Bartell Theatre. After the death of his beloved dog, a now high-school aged Charlie Brown (‘CB’) finds himself seeking comfort and reassurance in familiar friends as he grapples with loss and the meaning of life.
Royal reimagines the entire Peanuts gang in the archetypes of American high school – the jocks, the stoners, the mean girls – but in doing so shows us just how tenuous these claims to clique can be. The recognizable and universal struggle to “find an identity” courses throughout this high-energy, high-humor, high-drama angsty teenage play, which will leave every audience member thinking about what we owe to each other and to our younger selves.
"It's been so fun to take such beloved and well-known characters like the Peanuts and put them in the real world," says Zak Stowe who--along with Jeremiah Gile--serves as co-director the show. "It makes that loss of youthful innocence all that more compelling and jarring when you are able to compare it to those iconic children's characters. These are definitely no longer the same kids who went looking for the Great Pumpkin all those years ago."
“Dog Sees God doesn't feel like the same old high-school-warfare schlock. The characters—teenage and reckless—are both genuinely sympathetic and unquestionably cruel. Growing more hysterical—and more harrowing—as it flows to an inevitable, uncomfortable end, this taut comedy manages to make tired clichés about stoners and popular homecoming airheads funny and endearing.” –NY Magazine
Tickets are $20, and $15 for students, seniors, and groups of 10 or more. Tickets may be purchased online at www.stageq.org or www.bartelltheatre.org , in person at the Bartell Theatre, or by calling the Bartell Box Office at (608) 661-9696.
About StageQ :
StageQ is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, community theatre based in Madison, Wisconsin dedicated to celebrating and advancing queer representation through theatre written by and about LGBTQ+ persons. Founded in 2001, StageQ produces several shows each season at the Bartell Theartre in Downtown Madison and prides itself on telling its community’s stories on stage and opening the joys of theatre to as many people in their community as possible. Some of StageQ’s previous productions include Southern Baptist Sissies, A Lady and a Woman, Cabaret, RAID! Attack on Stonewall, and Queer Shorts: The Spirit of Stonewall.
For more information contact: Amelia Speight [Exec. Producer] amelia@stageq.com (608) 333-4558