Interview: Donna Provencher of YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN at Boerne Community Theatre

  

When You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown opens Aug. 21 at Boerne Community Theatre, audiences will encounter the familiar Peanuts gang — Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Sally, Schroeder and Snoopy — but director Donna Provencher hopes they’ll also recognize something of themselves, too.

The musical, based on Charles M. Schulz’s beloved Peanuts comic strip, unfolds through a series of songs and vignettes about the seemingly small triumphs and catastrophes of childhood: a lost kite, an unrequited crush, a beloved blanket, a disastrous baseball game and the eternal question of what, exactly, makes someone a “good man.” The production runs Aug. 21 through Sept. 6.

Provencher talked about finding the emotional heart beneath the comic-strip humor, building a production around community, and why one performance is being specifically designed to welcome audience members with autism, ADHD and other neurodevelopmental disabilities.

Q: Why You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown? What makes this show worth revisiting?

PROVENCHER: There’s something both eternal and deceptively simple about Charlie Brown. Charles Schulz has been gone for two and a half decades and we’re still talking about Peanuts and watching A Charlie Brown Christmas every year. These are little kids seemingly worrying about baseball games and book reports and whether anyone likes them, but underneath it all, they’re grappling with some of the biggest existential questions at the heart of human existence: Am I good enough? Do I belong here? Why do other people understand the social rules when I don’t? What makes me happy? It makes for a show that is uniquely appreciable by children and adults. Charlie Brown is, at the end of the day, a fabulous example of an Everyman character. He fails constantly, he worries constantly, and he keeps showing up anyway. I think there’s something incredibly relatable about that – and the enduring power of the Peanuts gang for the last three-quarters of a century seems to back that up.

Q: The show is often treated as children’s theater. Is that how you approached it?

PROVENCHER: Not exactly. It’s absolutely family-friendly, and children can enjoy it (my own kids are itching to attend!) but the material is much more interesting when adult actors are playing children (and dogs – yes, you, too, Mike [Parisi, portraying Snoopy]) with sincerity rather than playing caricatures of being children (or dogs) – and my cast is so amazing at living in that liminal space. Schulz understood that childhood emotions aren’t “mini” versions of adult emotions. When you’re six, losing your kite or getting a “C” on your coat hanger sculpture can genuinely feel like the actual worst thing that has ever happened to anyone, anywhere.

The comedy comes from how seriously these characters take their individual tiny universes. But every once in a while, the show catches you with something surprisingly profound.

Q: Your production also has an expanded ensemble. What does that add?

PROVENCHER: It makes the Peanuts world feel bigger and more three-dimensional. Charlie Brown and his friends don’t exist in a vacuum; there’s a whole community of other kids with their own individual fears and dreams and hopes and ideas around them. That became important to me because so much of this show is ultimately about belonging — not necessarily becoming the coolest or most successful person in the room, but realizing there are people who want you in the room in the first place.

We also have our three understudies integrated into that ensemble, which has allowed us to build a broader company around the central six characters rather than treating understudies as people waiting invisibly in the wings.

Q: There’s also a special sensory-friendly performance. What will that look like?

PROVENCHER: On Thursday, Aug. 27 at 7:30 p.m., we’re offering our first sensory-friendly performance designed specifically to make live theater more accessible to autistic, ADHD, and otherwise disabled or sensory-sensitive audience members, whether adults or children.

We’ll adjust lighting and sound, eliminate some of the usual expectations around audience behavior (optional dance party in the back row!), no one need sit still or leave their stuffies or blankets at home, we’ll have a sensory quiet room so folks can step out and take a break if they need it, we’ll have stim toys and earplugs to hand out, and we’ll ask the audience to hold applause and do sparkle hands instead, just in case some of our friends find the noise overwhelming. People can move, vocalize, use comfort items, step out and return as they need to. We’re also creating a cozy sensory space outside the seating area for anyone who needs a break. The goal isn’t to ask people who struggle with live theater to endure it more successfully. It’s to change the environment so more people can actually enjoy it. The question should never be, “How do we get everyone to conform to this unnecessarily rigid idea we have of how the performing arts ‘should’ work?”, but “What modifications could we make so more people can get to enjoy this?”

Q: Why was offering that performance personally important to you?

PROVENCHER: I am diagnosed with level 1 autism and ADHD myself, and have kids with similar needs, and am honored to be the 2026 recipient of Art Spark Texas’s Haven Street-Allen Artist of the Year award for efforts in inclusion. So accessibility means a great deal to me. Several of our performers are also on the autism spectrum. The theater community talks constantly about wanting everyone to feel welcome, but “everyone is welcome” and “we have designed this space so you can actually participate in it” are two different things.

Since Charlie Brown is so universally heralded as an autistic-coded character, and there’s so much scholarship to suggest that Charles Schulz himself had heightened autistic traits, this seemed like a good opportunity. I wanted families who may have assumed live theater simply wasn’t available to them to know that, during this performance, they don’t need to apologize for how they or their child experiences the world. Nobody has to worry that movement or a vocalization or needing to leave the room means they’re “doing theater wrong.” Different is not wrong. It’s just different. And there’s something especially appropriate about doing that with Peanuts, because these characters are always, in Schulz’s universe, allowed to be intensely, unapologetically themselves.

For someone who hasn’t been to Boerne Community Theatre before, what kind of organization is it?

PROVENCHER: Boerne Community Theatre has been a vital part of the Hill Country arts community for decades – it celebrated its 35th anniversary this year. And as someone who’s worked in professional, community, and educational theater spaces, what I love about this place is that it really is a community theater in the fullest sense of the word, with all the love and support that entails. In addition to a full season of plays and musicals, BCT offers two Teen Troupe productions each year, an Academy and summer drama camps for younger performers, scholarships, special events and opportunities for people to get involved both onstage and behind the scenes. There’s a real emphasis on creating an entry point into theater for people of different ages and experience levels, whether you’re buying your first theater ticket, auditioning for your first show, or have been doing this (like me) for 30+ years.

Q: What do you hope audiences leave with?

PROVENCHER: The last song is “Happiness,” and I think the entire show gently progresses toward that very simple idea. Happiness isn’t necessarily found in some significant life-changing event. Sometimes it’s finding the pencil you thought you lost. Sometimes it’s someone you love saving you a seat. Sometimes it’s realizing that even on a day when you feel like a complete and total abject failure, someone out there is really glad you’re still here.

If people walk out laughing, wonderful. But I also hope they walk out feeling a little more compassionate toward themselves and toward the Charlie Browns in their own lives.

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown runs Aug. 21 through Sept. 6 at Boerne Community Theatre, 907 E. Blanco Road in Boerne, with regular Friday and Saturday curtains at 8:00pm and Sundays at 2:30pm.  Tickets are available at www.boernetheatre.org or by calling the box office at (830)249-9166.  The production is directed by Donna Provencher, with music direction by Andrew Childers, choreography by Brie Dumond and assistant direction/stage management by Keisha McFerrin.

CAST

• Charlie Brown – Mason Low
• Snoopy – Michael Parisi
• Schroeder – Dwayne Shaw
• Linus – Lorenzo Mireles
• Sally – Jordan Roberts Gouvea
• Lucy – Ellie Jepperson
• Understudies Isabella Aquino (Sally), GlennAlise Saunier (Lucy), Andrew Stoner (Linus)

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