YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN
Set Design: Narelle Sissons | Lighting Design: Rick Martin
Costume Design: Jacqueline Firkins | Musical Director: John Jay Espino
Scroll down to read Drew's director's note for You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown at Idaho Shakespeare Festival.
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown | Director's Note
One of my first encounters with theater as a child was a production of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown. My oldest sister, whom I idolized, played Lucy. Of all the “Peanuts” characters, I had always rather identified with Linus and, sitting cross-legged on a gymnasium floor witnessing the transformation of Nancy into Lucy, I became him. The high-school actor on the stage may have been doing all the moving around, but it was my story he was telling in all its sad, funny, serious, and silly glory. That performance remains one of the most enchanting theatrical experiences of my life.
Years later, it amazes me how much I still see myself in Linus. But, now I see myself in Snoopy, too. And Schroeder and Sally. Even Lucy. (And we all see ourselves as Charlie Brown, right?) For fifty years, Charles Schulz delighted the world with his insightful portraits of children simultaneously filled with childlike wonder and adult anxiety. He celebrated their very ordinariness, while embracing all their eccentricities. It’s impossible not to love each of them for who he or she is. I look at them and I recognize the child that I once was, as well as the adult I’m still trying to become.