Take the cheery, funny, Peanuts characters of Charles Shultz that we all know and love. Now, take every teen angst storyline ever written in the history of teen angst. Now throw them both in a blender, add in a few F-bombs and a big fat joint. Mix them all together and what do you get? Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, a play by Burt V. Royal.
When Ms. Carroll first presented the script to our theatre production class at Howe Sound Secondary School, most of us were on the ground in fits of tears while those of us who were too cool to show emotion hid in a dark corner and contemplated our existence. OK, so maybe that's a little overdramatic, but that is exactly what this play is all about: the sheer drama of being a teenager.
To those for whom the tender years of teenage-hood are now just a distant memory, one might not think much of the subject matter. I mean, how many problems do teenagers actually have? They live for free off their parents, and the hardest work they do in a day is, at worst, a calculus exam. But not in this play.
The drama covers every topic from bullying to pyromania to homosexuality to suicide - all reasons that the story is so controversial. It pushes the often-undercredited issues that teenagers face to the surface and forces the audience to think a little deeper about topics that figure prominently in the lives of youth today. Because of this, the performance of the piece is closed to the public. The Howe Sound theatre production class will perform Dog Sees God to an invited audience on Nov. 14, 15 and 16. After that we'll take the play to compete in a festival in Vancouver.
Personally, I've found the experience of being an actor in the piece to be quite rewarding. I think everyone participating in putting it together found something in the writing to relate to, which brought us all closer together and offered that valued sense of not being alone. That being said, I have no idea how a fully grown audience of outsiders will react to the production, invited or not. Call it a leap of faith; I suppose that's the risk our entire class has to take.
