The Peanuts gang with real issues

The University of Northern Iowa Student Theatre Association will present its production of Bert V. Royal's "Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead" Saturday and Sunday.
   
The show is an unauthorized parody of the Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic strip, featuring the classic characters in a confusing teenage world.
   
"This is not the familiar Charlie Brown," said director Katy Slaven. "This is Charlie Brown if you put the Peanuts gang in high school and gave them all of the issues that real teenagers must deal with."
   
The show covers several important issues that teenagers face, including drug use, suicide, eating disorders, violence, rebellion and sexual identity.
   
"It's a simple play, but it takes the two-dimensional characters with whom we are oh so familiar and gives them a story that is very complex and very real," Slaven said.
   
"Dog Sees God" is the first full-length show that the junior theater performance major has directed. "It's been way exciting to learn more about the process of casting, assembling a design team and collaborating with dozens of people to stage a production in the Strayer-Wood Theater," she said.
   
Senior Cedar Falls High student Sam Lilja, who stars as CB, first ordered the script to find a monologue for some auditions.
   
"I read it and found it was a really powerful play," he said. "I had Katy read it, and she loved it."
   
"The first time I read this script, I was between laughing and crying the whole time," Slaven said. "Any play that does that gets added to my list of plays I want to do some day."
   
The death of the iconic Snoopy sets the stage for the show, which both humorously and seriously explores CB's attempts to come to terms with death and the metaphorical rain cloud hanging over his life.
   
"It's an emotional show," said Lilja. "I go home after tearing myself down every night, and I try to build myself up during the day before I tear myself down again."
   
While the original comic strip was traditionally lighthearted, "Dog Sees God" is not for children. The show also contains several important messages. One such theme is the importance of individuality.
   
"It's OK to be different, and there's no need to apologize," Lilja said.
   
"I would say that the message is all summed up in one line of the play, ‘Maintain in your heart all that makes you who you are,'" Slaven said.
   
Performances for "Dog Sees God" will be at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday in the Strayer-Wood Theater. Tickets are $5 and the show is open to the public.