The Mesa Experimental Theater inside the Moss Performing Arts Center opened their latest stage production on Thursday, Feb. 14, revealing to their audience a slew of Charlie Brown characters with a unique twist. 

Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead explores the classic Peanuts’ characters in their teen years. The performance was held again on Feb. 15 and Feb 16. 

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“Since it is based on the Peanut’s characters, I think it’s automatically kind of relatable to people,” Senior student at Colorado Mesa University Ashli Alderman said. “Kind of the themes they talk about is, like, identity, what it means to be yourself, and then, of course, things like addiction, and eating disorders, and sexuality and all this stuff that a lot more teenagers deal with than you might think.”

Dog Sees God, rated for mature audiences due to language and general content, covers several bases of what it means for people to be themselves in a world full of judgment. “I think it’s a very relatable show and it has a very good overall message of what it means to be yourself and stay true to that,” Alderman said.

The play explores drug use, child sexual abuse, suicide, eating disorders, teen violence, rebellion, sexuality by the end, with extra emotional investment due to the fact that it’s dealing with beloved Peanuts characters, posing a question of “how did it come to this?”

“[The play] kind of takes the Peanuts characters and either, like, goes in exactly the opposite direction of what you’d think that child would grow into, or just evolves them as a character,” Alderman said. Lucy, for example, ends up contained in a correctional facility of sorts, which isn’t surprising judging by her characterization in Peanuts.

“It compares well and it does keep the vibe of each [original] character alive,” Alderman said, “but takes it in a way that makes sense because we all grow up and you don’t know what path you’re going to take.”

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In Dog Sees God, Charlie Brown, dubbed CB by his friends, has an identity crisis. His sister, Sally, goes through a Gothic phase and also struggles to find who she’s supposed to be. Lucy is institutionalized for pyromaniac behavior and every other well-known character gets a story of his or her own.

“Depending on little things that happen in your life, you could end up somewhere completely different,” Alderman said.