ChristCo Weekly: Charlie Brown meets Jesus
The general reaction I get whenever I pitch my play is a satisfying one: laughter. Laughter, soon after followed with questions: “Why Charlie Brown?” “And, why Charlie Brown as a born-again Christian?”
That America seems to have gotten way more religious over the last 10 years isn’t a secret. But, I didn’t write this script to make any kind of a statement on religion. I have my own opinions about it, but I wasn’t interested in beating them over anybody’s head. I’m more interested in how a person’s faith (in anything, actually) is so vehemently tested these days by buying power. Think about the revenue that a niche audience can generate for an industry: book sales, movie sales, downloads, travel packages, apparel, merchandise – even elections. One thing that’s become very apparent to me is that you can get anybody to buy anything if they believe in the message; and, it gets scary when they think that you’re only a part of something by spending money on it. So where does that leave the faithful? The people who actually are doing the work because of the message, and not looking for an easy answer? That’s the story I was more interested in telling.
My original idea was to write a comedy about cult mentality. Then, due to some circumstances around CBA’s first public reading in December 2011, I got to thinking about 2012, the end of the world, Doomsday, blah, blah, blah. It then became: “What if I wrote a holiday special with kids about The Apocalypse? It could be just like Charlie Brown Christmas.” Then, a good friend of mine who is now a successful TV writer gave me a piece of advice that sealed it: “Dude, if you’re going to base is on Charlie Brown, don’t be coy – own it.” And the rest is pretty much history…
Wanna know how it all turned out? You’ll have to swing by The Tank Theater on March 22nd at 7:30 p.m. to see for yourself.
-Matt Fried