When CB's [Charlie Brown] dog [Snoopy] dies from rabies, CB begins to question the existence of an afterlife. His best friend [Pig Pen] is too burnt out to provide any coherent speculation; his sister [Sally Brown] has gone goth; his ex-girlfriend [Lucy] has recently been institutionalized; and his other friends are too inebriated to give him any sort of solace. So he turns to Beethoven [Schroeder], his long lost friend who he has bullied and tormented- along with the rest of the school- after his dad was arrested for sexually assaulting him as a child. Through apologies and trying to hold on to what makes you happy, despite the world around them disapproving, Beethoven and CB attempt to claw out a place for themselves in this dark version of Charles Schultz’s kid ensemble.

Beethoven was a challenging character to perform and inhabit for me because of the relatability of the character’s, constant, insecurities and pessimism that isn’t unreasonable considering the horrible occurrence that has been his life. It involved having homophobic slurs thrown at me, mentions of suicide, and the almost unbearable journey of trying to understand why such horrible events could happen to him. It forced the character, and subsequently myself, to find out how to keep going despite everything in your life telling you to stop/give up. And through Beethoven we get to see what the breaking point for our own will and persistence might be and what does or doesn’t makes life worth living.