You're a Good Man Charlie Brown
Music & Lyrics by Clark Gesner
Book by John Gordon & Charles M. Schulz
Actor-Musician Concept by Nick Cearley & Lauren Molina
World Premiere Actor-Musician Version — Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park
Directed by Bill Fennelly
Music Directed and Arranged by Michael Holland
Choreographed by Jenn Rose
Set Design by Michael Schweikardt
Costume Design by Kathleen Geldard
Lighting Design by Kenton Yeager
Sound Design by Nick Kourtides
A Note from BillYou’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown began for me with an invitation from Nick Cearley and Lauren Molina, whose idea for a new actor-musician version immediately opened up something compelling in the material: the chance to explore what I think of as the Schulzian paradox for a modern audience. The complexity of adulthood already lives inside every child, just as the heart of a child continues to beat inside every adult. That tension, between innocence and anxiety, joy and terror, hope and disappointment, became the emotional world of the production.
At Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, we created a world-premiere actor-musician staging, with Michael Holland as arranger and music director, that treated Schulz’s characters not as cartoons but as profoundly human people, searching for happiness, connection, belonging, and some way to make sense of being alive. The music-making itself became part of that search: a communal act in which these characters could reach toward one another, fail, recover, and keep going.
Beneath the simplicity of Charlie Brown is a radical tenderness: the idea that happiness may not be something we conquer, but something we discover in moments of connection, friendship, play, and the courage to keep showing up for one another. In Charlie Brown’s endless, hopeful striving, we can also see the existential crisis at the heart of the American Dream, the promise that happiness is always one win, one kick, one friend away. And we root for Charlie Brown’s (and our) determination to keep going anyway.
Reconsidering this classic through that lens was a joy, and it was gratifying to see the experience resonate with adults and children alike. The world will always benefit from Charles Schulz’s quiet, funny, and unexpectedly spiritual meditations on what it means to be alive.
