Dog Sees God Project - Grade: A PDF

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Dog Sees God Final Project Essay...

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UCOR 102.09 6 April 2018 Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead Creative Research Project Bert V. Royal’s Dog Sees God, a degenerate interpretation of the famous comic strip Peanuts, takes on the role of captivating the wild ride of teenage life and growing up. Royal creates a bold plot that underlines a variety of topics which include homosexuality, bullying, eating disorders, suicide, drug abuse, labeling and stereotypes. He twists and turns Peanuts plot and cast relationship ultimately to craft a dark comedy as well as to provoke a scene-to-scene reaction from his audience. Because of this, I want to emphasize some of those reactional elements, such as controversial topics and the influence of Peanuts, in my personal production of Dog Sees God. Throughout this production, there will be an underlining on today’s teenage life and growing up. Specifically, I would like to focus on homosexuality, drug use, and labeling and stereotypes. Homosexuality is one of the most primary ideas expressed throughout the writings of Dog Sees God. This is significantly seen CB and Beethoven’s newly discovered but undefined relationship, as well as the possible hinted feelings that Matt has towards CB. I find this topic one to be emphasized because of its relevance to when it was written in the early 2000s and today. At the time Dog Sees God was written, it was a heightening time for homosexuality in society and the media. Several television shows incorporated gay and lesbian characters during this period. Additionally, high school and college student groups had growth in gay-straight alliances, all the while multiple companies activated anti-discrimination policies (Ohlander). This has become even more prevalent in today’s society with greater understanding of the LGBTQ community. A consideration has been seen through multiple clubs and organizations at

colleges, safe spaces, governmental policies, and legal same-sex marriages. Due to this, I think it is important to express the homosexuality that is presented in Dog Sees God because I feel as though the play has shown a lack of understanding/shamming of homosexuals through bullying while today people have come to be more understanding of it. In addition to homosexuality, my production would like to emphasize the drug use and labeling and stereotypes that were vocalized in the original writings of the play. Drug use has always existed in humanity, but it seems as though in today’s generations, kids are becoming more involved in drugs at a younger age and higher intensity. In Dog Sees God, Van is characterized as the high school stoner who is constantly “blazing up.” Many people today could relate to Vans character as well as habits. Therefore, I would like to use my production as a little bit of drug awareness by incorporating posters which will be displayed on the set. Alongside this is the labeling and stereotypes which again are seen in Van as well as Marcy and Tricia. As mentioned before, Van is the stereotypical stoner by wearing sunglass and constantly rolling up whatever comes his way into a joint. Marcy and Tricia are views as the popular high school sluts by their carelessness in hooking up with boys and getting drunk at school. Labels and stereotypes are an important topic to implement because they are very heavily used today. In today’s society, younger generations are more susceptible to judgement and comparing themselves to the labels that they are given. Overall, the controversial topics presented in Dog Sees God have a primary existence in society amongst teenagers today. For this reason, I am choosing to set the time period of my production as present day, 2018. In doing so, I hope to have an effect on the audience and the most recent generation by creating a more realistic production. I think that the audience will be able to relate to not only the characters and dialogue, but the presentation of production because

of how relevant homosexuality, drug use, labeling and stereotypes continue to be. In order to create a realistic production that impacts the audience, certain theatre elements will be used. Staging will be an important aspect to this play, therefore, the style used will be the prosceniums. The proscenium style stage was adjusted in 1880 to create a “picture frame” or imaginary wall throughout which the audience experienced the illusion of spying on the characters behaving exactly as if they were unobserved (Britannica). This style is fitting as well as ironic in the sense of the adjustment to create a “picture frame” because of the plays influence from the Peanuts comic strip where the cartons are in comic strips and pictures. A theatre that has this type of staging is Cleveland’s Playhouse the Allen Theatre. Being from Cleveland, OH, I wanted to incorporate a touch of home into the production location. The set design for this production will incorporate elements from Charles M. Schultz Peanuts with a present-day time period influence. On stage, there will be a background with a physical component that is an enlarged red dog house to replicate that of CB’s dog who had passed and related to Peanuts Snoopy’s dog house. The dog house will contain three sections: the roof which will be the music room, the base split into two parts being a brick wall and the infamous cafeteria. The music room will contain a red piano to signify the piano played in Peanuts, which is played by Beethoven in this production. Some of the monumental scenes of Dog Sees God occur here, such as: CB and Beethoven’s mending of their friendship, their first kiss, and Matt beating up Beethoven for supposedly “turning his best friend gay”. Below the

music room at the base will lie the brick wall and the cafeteria. The purpose of the brick wall is to hold the spotlight conversations or monologues, such as CB writing/reading his letters and conversations with Van while he smokes a joint and discusses afterlife outside of school. Next to the brick wall is the cafeteria which contains drug awareness posters to reinforce that idea of how prevalent drug use is in todays’ teens. The cafeteria is also the primary setting for Tricia, Marcy, and Matt thrive and have many of their scandalous conversations.

In addition to the locations implemented in the dog house, each room will be influenced by certain colors. The colors that will be used are black, white and red, each holding a meaning behind them. The music room and the cafeteria will be in black and white. This will represent the mix of goodness and evils that occurs in these rooms such as Marcy and Tricia’s friendships, Beethoven’s beautiful music, and Matt’s pig-like nature. The outlining of the house, the piano, and the brick wall will all be red. When reading the play, it seemed as though CB was most in touch with himself when writing/reading his letters, alone with his own thoughts and words. Therefore, the brick wall was created as his safe space and using red to emphasize his true self in these moments. Additionally, red signifies passion, desire, love and emotional intensity. The piano’s redness implies the beginning of the love between CB and Beethoven—their first kiss after playing the piano. Red also represents blood and pain which is seen through Matt’s bullying of Beethoven by smashing his hands and head on the piano causing Beethoven physical, emotional, and mental pain. Within the set design of house, there will be specific lighting to set certain moods for every scene. An article written by the Clifton College discussed how lighting and color affect the mood of the play with a specific example of a production at the Redgrave Theatre of The Two

Gentlemen of Verona. The article describes the follow scene and lighting techniques, “It starts in Verona which is dark and moody, and then we go to Milan which is very chic and bright. The light gives the clear difference between the stark scenes and brighter ones” (Walsh). With that being said, all three of the rooms will remain at the same brightness throughout the play but the changing factor will be the background sky behind the house. The sky will change from dark to light depending on the events of the scene. For example, if Marcy and Tricia are engaging in a loud drunk conversation about nonsense, the sky will be bright blue to display a light mood. In contrast, at the times of bullying and Beethoven’s death, the sky will be dark to represent a somber mood. Alongside lighting, the production will incorporate literal sounds to aid in realistic aspects, enhance certain scenes/characters, and grasp the audience’s attention. The sound of the school bell ringing in the beginning of “Where Swine Live” will be used to not only begin the scene, but as a warning of Matt’s bold and vulgar character entering on the stage for the first time in the play. Additionally, when Beethoven plays the piano, there will be a literal sound of that song. For example, the scene “The Viper’s Nest” will open up to Chopin’s Prelude #4 in E Minor, Op. 28/4 and close with “Heart and Soul” as Beethoven and CB play the piano together. By doing, some elements smaller from the original script are able to be incorporated into the production. Also, “Heart and Soul” is a more romantic and heartfelt song about falling in love which is suitable for this scene because it is where CB and Beethoven engage in their first kiss. As for additional sounds, the production will have Ludwig van Beethoven’s Op. 130 playing at both the before and after the play, and then Op. 135 playing during intermission. These pieces were some of the final compositions of Beethoven before his death, therefore they have been chosen to be not only a tribute to his death, but Dog Sees God’s Beethoven death as well.

Finally, the element of costumes will be used to bring the entire production together. When coming up with the costumes for each character, the color and time period were all taken into consideration. An article on the symbol of theatrical color and costume described how the costume color is one of the non-verbal elements of the mise-en-scene, working as a dramatic signifier and creates a visual language that connects color to the character (Elnecave). Using this knowledge, each character will wear the color of their correlating character from Peanuts. For example, CB who imitates Charlie Brown will wear a yellow polo embedded with a black squiggle. The overall theme for costumes will be a 2018 version of Peanuts, hip and trendy. This correlation between color and character with a 2018 spin will be exhibited by focusing on the popular and risqué best friends, Marcy and Tricia. As picture, Marcy and Tricia will be embracing teenage girl’s style of today by wearing clothing similar to that of Urban Outfitters. Urban Outfitters is one of the most present-day “trendy” places for clothing amongst teen girls. Both of them will wear slightly revealing shirts to show a bit of scandal with high wasted jeans and skirts. Tricia will be wearing a green top because that color correlates to Peppermint Patti’s outfit in Peanuts. Continuing, Marcy will be wearing red for the same reason of her correlation to Marcie. The color green represents jealousy, greed, and energy which are all shown through Tricia’s personality, especially in conversations in “Spork.” Marcy’s personality spews red which represents strength and power which is shown by her being the slightly more dominant friend, especially in “Spork” where she can trick Tricia into believing anything. Besides the clothing, the two best friends faces will be

Tricia

Marcy

covered in makeup (eyeliner, concealer, blush, etc). Marcy and Tricia are constantly putting other characters down and talking smack in order to make themselves feel better. Therefore, the large doses of makeup represent these two characters covering up their own insecurities and needing extra things to make themselves have better confidence. The theatre elements chosen for this production emphasize the degenerate version of Peanuts, known as Dog Sees God, all the while integrating a present-day feel. I hope to have an impact specifically on today’s generation of viewers because of the relevance in homosexuality, drug abuse, and labels and stereotypes. Furthermore, colors will serve as a main indicator of each character’s deeper identity and emotions. There is also a great influence from Peanuts on the production because of the relevance to the scrip and character development. Overall, I hope to create a realistic production that reaches out to the audience through symbolic theatrical elements.

Works Cited Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Proscenium.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 6 Nov. 2008. Elnecave, Claudine. “The Symbol of the Theatrical Color Costume” The 11th International Conference of ISSEI. Aug. 2008. Ohlander, Julianne. “Explaining Educational Influences on Attitudes toward Homosexual Relations.” Social Science Research, vol. 34, no. 4, 2005, pp. 781–799. Walsh, Becky. “How Light and Colour Affect Mood in Theatre.” Redgrave Theatre Bristol, 2018....