Eliza Dushku

I Was a Teenage Blockhead: Dog Sees God with Young Stars Starts Off-Broadway

The Off-Broadway run of Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead featuring a slew of young screen stars begins Dec. 1 at the Century Center for the Performing Arts.

Trip Cullman (The Last Sunday in June) directs the new run of the award winning 2004 FringeNYC take-off of the "Peanuts" characters. Opening night is slated for Dec. 15 at the downtown stage.

Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead is written by Bert V. Royal. The spoof of the Charles Schulz comic strip "Peanuts" follows the original gang a decade later soon after their beloved beagle companion dies. Royal’s inspiration was to do a play "about teenagers because I think they are the scariest people, vicious and just mean spirited," the young scribe told Playbill.com. "I wanted to do it with some kids that we felt like we knew and show them as teenagers." Impending adulthood has now resulted in new identities: a missing pen pal, an abused pianist, a pyromaniac ex-girlfriend, two drunk cheerleaders, a homophobic quarterback, a burnt out Buddhist and a drama queen sister.

The starry cast includes Eddie Kaye Thomas ("American Pie," Smelling A Rat), Eliza Dushku ("Bring It On," "Tru Calling") and Ian Somerhalder ("Lost," "Rules of Attraction") in an ensemble that also features America Ferrara ("Real Women Have Curves," "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants"), Kelli Garner ("The Aviator," "Thumbsucker"), Ari Graynor ("Mystic River," Brooklyn Boy), Logan Marshall Green ("The O.C.," The Distance From Here) and Keith Nobbs ("Phone Booth," Romance). For more on the characters and actors, visit Playbill.com’s "Meet the Gang" feature.

The design team for Dog Sees God features David Korins (scenic), Jenny Mannis (costumes), Darron L. West (sound) and Brian MacDevitt (lighting).

Dede Harris - currently represented on Broadway by Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Hairspray - will produce with Martian Entertainment as co-producer. Sorrell Tomlinson and David Carpenter are associate producers.

Produced by File 14 Productions at The New York International Fringe Festival in 2004, the palindromically-titled show then continued at its venue under an Off Broadway contract in association with the Soho Playhouse. The work received a Fringe Excellence Award for Overall Production and GLAAD’s Media Award for Outstanding Off-Off Broadway Production.