Theatre Tulsa x Karmen GoldenBough: Dog Sees God
Theatre Tulsa Studios
March 28, 2026
There’s something so satisfying about a Bildungsroman. As a teen, I found stories about youthful emotional growth melodramatic, but I’ve discovered a new love for them in my adult years. Uninhibited characters who are simultaneously so constrained by high school social politics! New budding love! Adults that just don’t get it! An epic house party where the drama of the school year shakes everything up! A final confrontation that’s usually violent and occasionally leads to death! You know this trope from all the movie classics: Mean Girls, Heathers, Thirteen, Superbad. When brought to the stage, as it was in Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead last weekend at Theatre Tulsa Studios, it’s totally cathartic.
Bert V. Royal’s 2004 play takes Charles Schultz’s beloved Peanuts characters, ages them up, and reimagines them as some of the worst high schoolers you’ve ever met. Matt (Pigpen), the jock, is an arrogant clean freak who can’t control his anger. Tricia (Peppermint Patty) and Marcy (Marcie) are your standard inseparable mean girls spewing fatphobic and homophobic rhetoric. Pothead Van (Linus) is philosophical but morally empty.
At the center of it all is CB (Charlie Brown), who finds himself disillusioned by the pursuit of popularity and embroiled in an identity crisis after the sudden death of his beloved dog. His confusion is amplified by his budding romantic feelings for Beethoven (Schroeder), a music aficionado and social outcast. Given that this play was written in the early 2000s and set in the ‘90s, CB’s sexual awakening does not go over well with his friend group. Actually, it goes horribly.
The tight cast of this show, self-produced and directed by Karmen GoldenBough in collaboration with Theatre Tulsa, fully leaned into their characters, not afraid of highlighting their rougher edges. Dawson Lynch was nauseating as Matt with his braggadocious bro-ness. You could easily find Ella Summers, who played Marcy, in the Mean Girls universe with her fully-embodied catty posture and tone. As Van’s sister, the Lucy parallel, Nicky Finch brought a comedic and cavalier mania that concealed the character’s true vulnerability.
Kymber Sage shined as CB’s sister, making the slightly obnoxious theatre kid who’s trying to find herself impossible not to love. Her one-woman-show monologue was an absolute show-stopper. Christian Stubblefield effortlessly led the cast as CB, his performance predominantly guided by the emotional desperation that comes with grief.