Charlie Brown

Casting

Our original 23 cast members included: Taylor Shepherd as Charlie Brown, Kurlayna Holt as Lucy Van Pelt, Kyle Hunt as Linus Van Pelt, Breanna Lopshire as Snoopy, Christopher Crane as Schroeder, Chevia Gates as Sally, Buddie Ann Bastain as Fredia, MaKenna Larsen as Violet, Whitney Calton as Peppermint Patty, Chyna Stuart as Marcie, Marcus Palmer as Franklin, Patrick Hatch as Roy, Eric Lyman as Shermy, Mickey Hensen as Clarea, Logan Lambertson as Pig Pen, Conner Havey as 5, Josie Dispain as Woodstock and (the rest of the character names I made up) McKayla Horne as Sophie, AloraDee Aders as Heather, Audrey Aders as Julie, Kinzie Robins as Suzie, Courtney Bloomquist as Abby and Bree'L Bosshardt as Betsy.

We went along until the 17th of September with little committment. I was getting frustrated! I was only having practice on Wednesday, Thursday and Fridays, and felt that wasn't too much to ask. When I made out a committment contract on the 18th and asked the students and their parents to sign it, those that hadn't ever come, those that were only coming once in a while, and 2 with failing grades, quit. We lost 10.

Then some students were rearranged to other parts, some had the same parts, but had their names changed, so that everyone was then one of the real Peanuts characters.

Character line up then was: Christopher Crane as Charlie Brown, Kurlayna Holt as Lucy Van Pelt, Kyle Hunt as Linus Van Pelt, Breanna Lopshire as Snoopy, Patrick Hatch as Schroeder, Buddie Ann Bastain as Fredia, MaKenna Larsen as Sally, Whitney Calton as Peppermint Patty, Chyna Stuart as Marcie, Marcus Palmer as Franklin, Eric Lyman as Shermy, Logan Lambertson as Pig Pen, McKayla Horne as Violet.

These students have been a very committed team. Nobody thinks they are any better than anybody else, and they treat each other with respect and are a great help to each other. It has been an honor to work with them.

Call Backs

On Friday the 29th of August, I made a copy of the songs for call backs so the students could learn them over the long weekend. Call backs were held on Wednesday, September 3rd. There were 12 students that came, hoping for a lead part. [I considered the following parts as leads: Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy, Schroeder, Sally, because they were the 6 characters that the show was written for. So, they each had a solo song, and many speaking parts.]

The show that I was familiar with in 1990, was written for Patty instead of for Sally, but I decided to try the new 'revised' version, this time. After we had had the original auditions and had handed parts out for the call backs, my piano players complained of the difficulty of the music, so, I called the company and asked to exchange this version for the original version. By doing that it changed the show, especially the parts of Sally and Schroeder, but I went ahead with call backs as planned.

I arranged to give several lines and a solo part in a song to each one that was brave enough to want a lead part. The only ones that didn't have a solo were the ones that said they only wanted speaking parts. I was pretty happy about how evenly the parts were divided.

We had 23 students in all that tried out for a part and we decided that we would include everyone, therefore had 23 characters.