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[0:00] Julie Cohen-Theobald: Now, that's what's so interesting about these types of little girls, is that their crushes then become as aggressive as their personalities. So, did you ever pursue any little boy as hardcore as Lucy?

[0:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I was actually really shy around boys when I was growing up. Yeah, I would never. Actually, you know what? You just brought back a really funny memory. When I was in first grade, I was kind of like the alpha of the playground, and my friends would catch the boys so that I couldn't hold them so I could kiss them. But then that was like super young, like first grade, and then my stronger memories are like kind of going through middle school and high school, and that's where I was very shy around boys.

[0:43] Julie Cohen-Theobald: I am shook, Julie. And you're going to put this on the air now and be very embarrassed.

[0:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome, everybody, to A Musical Theatre Podcast, where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theater history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff. Today we're talking about YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, Charlie Brown. And I gotta be honest, I'm honored that you're my guest, Julie. Here to talk to me about it is the Executive Director of the Educational Theatre Association. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Julie Cohen-Theobald. Hi, Julie.

[1:29] Julie Cohen-Theobald: Thank you, Jeff. Hi, it's so good to be here. This is great.

[1:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Now, I know that you have kind of a personal relationship to this show because you've done it twice at two different points in your life, right?

[1:40] Julie Cohen-Theobald: Yes, very different points in my life.

[1:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay, so how old were you when you did it the first time?

[1:44] Julie Cohen-Theobald: The first time I was nine years old. I was in fourth grade. It was my very first musical. And, you know, it was one of those, like, process of elimination. Like, I tried sports, and I wasn't good at that. And I tried gymnastics, and I wasn't good at that. And I'm from Chicago, so everybody did ice skating, and I wasn't very good at that. So my mom signed me up for this class called Triple Threat, you know, singing, dancing, and this was like the kind of the showcase performance from the class. And at that point, I was Snoopy.

[2:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes! Showstopper, I'm sure.

[2:20] Julie Cohen-Theobald: Yeah, the suppertime song was definitely, you know, the 11 o'clock number at the time. And then I did the show again when I was in my late 20s, and I got to play Lucy, which is actually the part that I've always wanted to play because it definitely reminded me of myself as a child. You know, I was a little bossy, and now, you know, I'm a leader. And that's because I had those qualities as a child, but definitely related to Lucy.

[2:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I love that Lucy's the alpha of this gang.

[2:48] Julie Cohen-Theobald: Totally. Yes, she is in charge.

[2:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's interesting that you said that you tried everything and, like, nothing was sticking. That is 100% my story.

[2:58] Julie Cohen-Theobald: What happened to you?

[2:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: We tried t-ball. I mean, like, God bless my parents. We tried t-ball. We tried soccer. We tried karate, which lasted, like, one class because the sensei terrified me. And then I got involved in clogging because I'm from Utah. So, like, Rocky Mountain, country-western, clogging.

[3:17] Julie Cohen-Theobald: That's kind of like tap dancing.

[3:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Exactly. Yeah, I think I actually did a clogging number once in, like, a high school variety show. There are two musicals where, like, there's usually clogging, and it's Annie Get Your Gun and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. And so it's like tap, but there are two taps, kind of loosely connected by screws on your shoes, so they jingle instead of just doing, like, a solid tap. So I started as a competitive clogger and then eventually found my way into musical theater from there. But it's interesting how little artists find their way.

[3:51] Julie Cohen-Theobald: Yeah, I mean, you have to find your thing. And for kids, you know, who may not be good at sports or, you know, academics, although I was good at academics too, but, you know, if they don't have theater as an option or they don't even know about it, like, some of these kids, like, in these rural areas, they may not even, like, have a professional theater in their city. The way they often discover is in school. And then when they do and they, you know, catch the bug and the light bulb moment and all that, and then, you know, it just becomes their thing and they have the confidence and get more and more involved like we did. So that's why it's so important that, like, that initial access point is there for everybody.

[4:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Agreed. I'm incredibly passionate about this art form as a filter through which we begin to understand and relate to the world, not just for enjoyment and for razzmatazz, which absolutely is there. It's part of it. Yeah. And I'm a huge fan of sequins. So, like, don't get me wrong. But the emotional and cultural impact of musical theater is much greater than I think we ever have conversations about. And when we introduce it early to children, the amount of history and even just kind of social awareness that begins to seep in like a sponge is incredible. I think that even more so than the skills of singing, dancing, acting, those empathetic skills are the most valuable thing we could give our children.

[5:15] Julie Cohen-Theobald: So you can be my speech maker from now on. Because that's what we talk about all the time, you know, a small percentage of people go on to Broadway. But what's really important is just who you become as a person and all those life skills. You know, think about how many adults are like terrified to speak in public or just the adaptability of getting thrown in lots of different situations. Every show you do is a new situation. It's a new team. It's a new theme. It's a new environment. You know, and you do that over and over and over again. And you can kind of get dropped in anywhere and, you know, figure things out. So, yeah, it gives great personal qualities. And when you talk about just the social and cultural awareness, you know, I just think about theater as stories.

And there's lots of ways to tell stories or take in stories. But what I love about a musical, especially a really good, well-produced musical, is, you know, you're on the edge of your seat the whole time and the songs give you goosebumps and chills and you laugh and like you're so into it that then like all those messages and themes and stories come and affect you in a different way than if you just, you know, read an article or heard about it in a different way.

[6:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You're totally right. It's an all sensory experience.

[6:22] Julie Cohen-Theobald: Yes. The other thing that I love about musical theater is that the source material can really come from anywhere. I mean, we have musicals based on books. We have musicals based on plays. We have musicals based really just on nothing other than history and imagination. And then we also have musicals based on comic strips. We're talking about one today, which is YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN based on the Peanuts comic strip. But of course, Annie came from a comic strip. Lil Abner also came from a comic strip. And what I don't think I realized is that the heyday of comic strips is actually very much an American art form in the same way that musical theater in its golden age was and is kind of an American art form. So it's kind of cool that there's some crossover here.

[7:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I never thought about that about comic strips being really an American thing. But that's really interesting. I think there have always been political cartoons and that sort of thing. But the idea of tuning in every week, a series.

[7:17] Julie Cohen-Theobald: Yeah, exactly. To see what's going on with your favorite characters. And one of the most popular of all time was the Peanuts comic strip, which was created by Charles M. Schultz. Now, I watched this interview with Mr. Schultz, and he says that he only goes by Sparky. If you know him, you refer to him as Sparky. So unfortunately, he has since passed. But in honor of that, I think we should refer to him as Sparky from here on out. So Sparky, a talented cartoonist, his illustrations were famously rejected from his high school yearbook. Which is fantastic. He served in World War Two. And then when he came back, he started working on a series of kind of one panel jokes. And it was called Little Folks.

And Little Folks is where Charlie Brown was born. He has this really amazing art style that's, when you think about it, very minimalistic. A lot of the characters are bald or have like two hairs on their head. Very simple, right? And they have these triangle bodies. And yet there's something so like iconic.

[8:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, iconic. You're exactly right about the style. He tried and tried and tried to get Little Folks sold into the newspapers and nobody was buying. And then he decided to, instead of doing the one panel thing, start splitting it up into a more story-like strip. And he called it the Peanuts Gang. And boom, it got picked up. Now, in its heyday, Peanuts was published in 2,600 papers in 75 countries in 21 languages. Crazy. Wow. And he did every single strip. That's what I don't think people realize. I just read that. Like he maybe took one vacation in his life or something where he took off a couple days and they did a rerun.

[9:13] Julie Cohen-Theobald: For his 75th birthday. He was like, I guess I'll take a vacation.

[9:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: 75th. Insane. Yeah. No reruns for the Peanuts Gang. Which means that he drew 17,897 strips in his lifetime. Wow. That's prolific. Seriously. His daughter, I guess, called him obsessed and he's like, yeah, that's true. Enter this composer named Clark Gessner. And he decided that he wanted to write an album of music based on these characters. So inspired by these characters. And all he was really planning to do was create an album. So he wrote the songs and was trying to go through all of the right corridors of seeing if the Peanuts world would be interested in adopting his music and taking it on. And he couldn't get seen or heard. And so then finally, he just recorded the songs and sent them to Sparky himself and said, take a listen to this.

Let me know what you think. Sparky loves it and gives his blessing for the album. So he records the album. Then a theatrical producer hears the album and says, hey, have you thought about turning this into a musical, into a live experience? He's like, not really. But OK, so they do. And it turns out to be this off-Broadway show. Now, if you look at the actual poster or even script, it says that YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN is, you know, music and lyrics by Clark Gessner and then book by John Gordon. Now, it turns out John Gordon doesn't exist. John Gordon is like a pseudonym for the entire staff and cast of the show, because everybody helped to create the flow and all of the different vignettes that make up the show. So it's almost like a devised piece based on the comic strip.

[11:09] Julie Cohen-Theobald: Yeah, exactly. They just kind of combed through all of them and were like, OK, maybe we can put this joke in here, this joke in there and just kind of sculpted something based on all of this reference material that they had to work from.

[11:21] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's amazing. It premieres off-Broadway in New York in 1967 and it runs for fifteen hundred performances. So that's four years, which is pretty incredible. It has many national tours. When did you first see it? I mean, so you did it when you were nine. But like, were you a fan of the Peanuts? Had you seen them?

[11:46] Julie Cohen-Theobald: I mean, I definitely saw them and we would get the newspaper at home. And then I have memories from childhood from, you know, the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown Christmas and Valentine. You'd be my Valentine, Charlie Brown. Definitely. And you would watch them every year. They were so smart to capitalize on holidays. They immediately became a tradition. I always loved the Thanksgiving one. I was thinking about the Thanksgiving one because that's coming up. Right. And he would like make popcorn. I don't know why. I just I always remembered that one. And the ice skating. You said you in Chicago, they were big ice skaters.

[12:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, there was like that whole ice skating special.

[12:25] Julie Cohen-Theobald: I also had a Snoopy stuffed animal growing up. Now that I'm remembering, I had this like I had the Snoopy stuffed animal that I got at Watertower Place like and it was like a special shopping trip downtown. And they would have all these clothes that you could like buy for the Snoopy. And I would like change its clothes from like pajamas to like a little engineer outfit to like a little cowboy outfit with overalls.

[12:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And that's fantastic. We probably spent a lot of money on the clothes for the stuffed animal.

[12:50] Julie Cohen-Theobald: I get it. I had a talking Mickey Mouse with the I actually still have him and I'm kind of terrified to see if he still works because like his eyes would blink and you know, those things can get creepy if they're not.

[13:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So obviously, Peanuts has a huge cultural footprint in our lives. How did you come about doing it later in your life in terms of the musical?

[13:16] Julie Cohen-Theobald: Well, I've always wanted to be Lucy. And so I do community theater. I did. I did theater in college. I did summer stock and I still do community theater when I can fit it in now. So community theater is, you know, it's a short term commitment. So I would kind of just like scope it out. You know, look at what shows the different theaters are doing, who's directing it, one of the auditions. And so when I saw Charlie Brown come up, I was like, I want to I really want to be Lucy. I was in my late 20s. So it was this like really small community theater. It was actually I remember the rehearsals were above a shoe factory and it was called like the old shoe factory theater. And it was that's adorable.

Like they didn't have heat working in the winter. And it was I mean, it was like a total not that adorable. I always say that like community theater, there's like a continuum and some have a little more theater and some have more community. And this one was definitely on the community side of the spectrum. But I thought, you know, you only need six people in the show. And if you get six people, it can be a great show, be a lot of fun.

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[28:25] Julie Cohen Theobald: Yeah, grounded, exactly. Then you have Schroeder, and Schroeder is a musical prodigy, virtuoso. He's got his little piano, and Lucy is head over heels in love with him. Oh, and then Snoopy, of course. Yeah, Snoopy. So Snoopy is Charlie Brown's faithful dog. He is 100% a dog and also 100% a human at the same time. And he's probably one of the most iconic, maybe the most iconic character of the entire gang. Yeah, I would say so. He's got some great moments in the show. The opening number is the title number, YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN, in which all of the kids are building him up because they all like him. I think that's really important in this show is that we hear from the get-go that everybody likes him.

Otherwise, we would just feel horrible for him for the rest of the show. But that is kind of the charm of this is that we don't think that everybody's mean to him. It just because of circumstance, he always gets crapped on. And that's where the humor comes from. After this great opening number, you have lots of vignettes. But one of the first things I wanted to talk about was Charlie Brown sitting at lunchtime and how he says that lunchtime is the worst time. He hates it because he feels like he's alone. And he's delivering this monologue. He opens up his lunch. He has a peanut butter sandwich, which he hates because the peanut butter gets stuck to the roof of his mouth and he can't get it off.

And so as an audience, we're just sitting watching Charlie Brown eat a peanut butter sandwich. And then he says, the PTA did really good at painting these benches. He's an optimist, looks for the good in things. After all of this, he's got to give the compliment to the PTA. I love that about him. I think that moment at lunch, I got goosebumps when you're talking just because I was a camp counselor for many years. And I think that just like the kid sitting alone at lunch is the saddest thing. Right. It's true. One of the next big highlights is Lucy and Schroeder. And what Clark Gesner, the composer, did, which is really smart, was that he took the Moonlight Sonata, because Schroeder's obsessed with Beethoven.

And Lucy's trying to have a conversation with him while he's playing. And so the musical line is kind of woven into this classical piece of music. It's like belting out this loud, obnoxious song. Lucy could not be more different than a beautiful classical piece of music. Yeah, it's a great contrast. And in my car, I don't know why, I can't figure out how to turn it off. But when my Bluetooth connects to my phone, and somebody calls me, this weird Moonlight Sonata club track kicks in. And it drives me crazy. But the only saving grace is I usually sing Lucy's part to it while it's playing. Exactly. You know something, Schroeder! That's great.

[31:31] Julie Cohen Theobald: Let's talk about both of Snoopy's numbers now, because they're really, really fun. This first one is kind of introducing us to the dog side of him. He's laying on his house, everything is fine, everything is great. It's a beautiful day, look at the sky, until all of a sudden, maybe he wants to bite somebody. And then all of a sudden, he's a dog, and he wants to go here, and he wants to go there. But also, it's a beautiful day. And so it's always this back and forth of trying to maybe get into the psychology of what it's like when a day is like for a dog. Exactly. And this whole squirrel type thing. Then of course, the other huge number of his is suppertime, which like you said, is the big 11 o'clock number.

And another really fantastic moment to musicalize, which is, I don't know if you're a dog person. I do, I have a dog. I've always had dogs. Always so excited to see you. Always so thrilled that you're going to be feeding them. The sheer exuberance that comes from those little animals is so beautifully put into music in this show. That's a great point. My dog now, she's too small to get up the stairs, because we have hardwood floors. And so it's like if I go upstairs for 15 minutes and come down the stairs, she's like greeting me like she hasn't seen me in three days. Has it been two minutes? Has it been two days? I don't know. Yeah, that music really does that. Those numbers really do bring that to life.

That's a great insight. I love dogs. My little dog is named Little Dude, and he is the sweetest little thing in the world. I'm so grateful for him. Okay, let's talk about Linus. So Linus has a song called My Blanket and Me, which, spoiler alert, is about him and his blanket. And it's this really sweet thing that you don't see anymore. But in the 1960s, it was popular because it happens in Once Upon a Mattress as well, where there's like a dance number for a character, but it's not meant to be a super impressive dance number. I'm talking about the jester. Like a dance break. Yeah, yeah. And it's just something to give a little insight to the character, but it's more endearing than anything else.

It's more endearing than impressive. It's more like an acting moment. Yes. But just to stop talking and express it in a different way. Yes, and I love that. I love using dance in lots of different ways, and this is a great example of that. The Doctor Is In is this really great moment where Charlie Brown decides that he's going to go to Lucy the psychiatrist. And so she's like set up this lemonade stand, but instead of it being like a typical lemonade stand that kids would do, it's a psychiatry office. Advice, five cents, right? Yes, exactly. Exactly. And so she gets him to say all of the horrible things about himself. Like, come on, Charlie Brown, just get it out. Say every horrible thing about yourself.

And he does, and she says, basically, yeah, you're totally right. And he's like, well, that's terrible. Like, I don't want to feel, I don't want to feel horrible about myself. And she's like, yeah, but that's what makes you, you. And he's like, oh, I get it. And she's like, five cents, please. Thank you very much. Now, when you have like nine-year-olds performing this stuff, there's no way that they know what they're doing, right? They get what they're doing, but at the same time, they don't understand it. Yeah, I remember like the Red Baron monologue and the biggest thing was, wow, that's a lot of lines to memorize. Isn't that so funny? I remember counting how many lines I used to have. Like, that was really important to me to know how many lines I had in the first act and how many lines I had in the second act. And now as an adult, I feel like it's the opposite. I'm like, I don't have to come on until scene three. Let's talk about my favorite number, which is Peter Rabbit.

[35:23] Julie Cohen Theobald: I was going to say that is my favorite song to the book report. Oh, it's so funny. The whole idea is that there's this book report that all of these kids have to write for school and it's on the children's book, Peter Rabbit. But throughout the number, we see so much of who they are by how they're choosing to write their book report. So you've got Lucy, who's only interested in how many words it has to be. Exactly. And she's like counting them down. Peter Rabbit was a super book about a super rabbit who made vegetables from other people's garden. And then she lists all the vegetables. Exactly. Because it takes up more words. I'm probably more of a lioness where I was like going way too deep in examining a work such as Peter Rabbit.

Then you've got Charlie Brown, who has so much anxiety he can't even start. He'll start tomorrow. He'll start tomorrow. He'll start tomorrow. If I start doing it now, then maybe, but I don't want to. And so then he doesn't. And then I can't remember what Sally does. Do you remember? I remember from the original because I did the original twice.

[36:30] Julie Cohen Theobald: Oh, so you remember Patty. Isn't there one that hasn't read the book and it's like, the name of the book about which this book report is about is? Yes, I think that is shorter. How do you fill all the words? How do you fill this book report with words when you actually have no idea what the book is about? That's exactly right. I totally forgot about that. So Schroeder begins. And then you just make stuff up, I think. Right. Yes. And then that's how he gets into the drama of it all is because it becomes very obvious that he has no idea what's actually going on. Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about that. I love also just like musically how everybody's doing a different thing and then it kind of all fuses together on top of each other at the same time.

Exactly. So once we hear everybody's perspective, then they all, oh, I remember. So Sally and Snoopy are hunting rabbits. There's this whole section where they're going on this great hunt. And then once we've been introduced to all of them, then musically, like you said, they all combine to this really epic sounding opus. It's pretty incredible. Is it a fugue? Is that the musical term for it? Oh, sure, sure. Yeah. Like Fugue for Tin Horns from Guys and Dolls. Yeah. Or even Counterpoint. This might as well be Tonight, the quintet from West Side Story. It actually, they're both the end of the first act, right before intermission. Right. That's true. Okay. So let's talk about some of the added songs for the revival that have become so popular.

One is for Sally and one is for Schroeder, the two characters that probably had the least to do. Sally got a new song called My New Philosophy, in which she's constantly learning new ways to tell people no, essentially, and to make her opinions known and all she wants to be is heard. Right. But it's a really sweet and fun song. And then Schroeder got a new song called Beethoven Day, which is celebrating his great composer and it ended up being kind of a gospel-themed number and actually made room for more diversity within the cast, because I think traditionally, the cast was white and the comic strip was very white. Diversity in musical theater and in casting has become at the forefront of conversations, especially here on the podcast.

And I think one of the big opportunities that we have is to introduce the arts and musical theater to diverse groups of children to ensure that the future is as colorful and diverse as it can be. How does that play into your work and what you've learned through your organization?

[39:15] Julie Cohen Theobald: It's a big priority for us. And yes, I feel like we provide that pipeline that's going to change things in the industry. And a lot of times, like we talked about, you find your thing when you're maybe in late elementary school or middle school. So that's where we need to make sure that theater is something that's relevant for everyone. We know that the theater teachers right now primarily are white. It's like 93%. And it's hard when there aren't role models. So we're working on programs to bring in artists of color into schools to work with students and to be role models. We're also looking at, I think a lot of teachers maybe are in a diverse school, but are not attracting the diversity of the school into the theater program.

And then some are doing a great job of that. So trying to figure out why and what it is that those teachers are doing. A lot of it has to do with material, making sure that there's material that is telling the stories of lots of different communities. And if that material is not there, encouraging more playwrights and even students devising their own work to tell their own stories. I think as a national organization that sets examples, we have a responsibility to make sure that we're putting things on our stage. Like we have the main stage of the International Thespian Festival, which is like the pinnacle of high school theater. We need to make sure that the stories and the schools and the people on that stage are representing all students.

And that's what's going to encourage younger kids to say, when they go and they sit on the floor and they watch that show, you talked about your Jack Frost show, they look up and they say, I want to do that. That's kind of where it begins.

[40:52] Julie Cohen Theobald: I can do it better than him. Yeah, I can do that. So we need to make sure that we're role modeling. That's beautiful. So we do have a lot of initiatives right now. I just talked to a school the other day in Pennsylvania where they were talking about a partnership with the Black Student Alliance to work on this devised piece of theater and get kids involved. So it's got to come from everywhere, but it's very important.

[41:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's really great. I've had several teachers reach out to me and ask, for example, I really want to do West Side Story. I don't have enough Latinx students in my program. Would it be okay to cast white kids as sharks? That sort of thing. And what would you say? What would you tell them?

[41:36] Julie Cohen Theobald: It's interesting. There is not a clear point of view in the school theater community on that. I feel like one of the best things about theater is, you talked earlier about empathy and walking in someone else's shoes. And what a better way to learn empathy and build relationships than walking in someone else's shoes who's different from you. And I think we have a great opportunity in an educational setting to let people walk in those shoes. And for example, Lin-Manuel Miranda is saying in his script, it's okay for a school to do In the Heights, even if they don't have a cast Latinx. However, I have also heard from teachers and students. I had students write me letters when they saw a show on our main stage of In the Heights, where there were white kids playing those roles.

And for them, it was very personal, and they felt like it was wrong, and that white kids should not be playing, especially if the role is about, it's central to the character, that racial identity or ethnicity. So it's...

[42:37] Julie Cohen Theobald: People have different opinions about it. I think it's important for us to walk in other people's shoes. It may depend on the role and the play and the playwright's intention, but I would err on the side, especially in educational theatre, of opening it up and telling more stories and letting more kids play those kinds of roles.

[42:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You talked about teaming up with different alliances within the schools or different clubs. Has that proved profitable from your experience?

[43:06] Julie Cohen Theobald: I was just thinking of another example of that, which was a school that did Hairspray in New Jersey where they didn't have the cast. It was a mostly white school or mostly white theatre program. Which is one where you would have to have the color because it's part of the... Well, I'll tell you something about that in a second on Hairspray, but they opened it up and they let other schools audition and partnered with other schools, and then those kids got a kind of experience where they were working with students from multiple schools, and it was like this really cool community-building experience. That was a great example. But I saw a production of Hairspray at an all-black school, and what they did is they used wigs.

They used headpieces, and so the kids that were playing, the black kids were not wearing wigs, and the ones playing the other game were wearing pink and yellow and light green. It actually worked really well. It was very clear from a storytelling standpoint, and it was an awesome production, and the director did a great job.

[44:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I can send you some pictures.

[44:07] Julie Cohen Theobald: I would love to see that. It really worked by using those wigs, and they weren't blonde or brunette wigs. They were actually colors, so it kind of took it out of reality a little bit, and it really made for very clear storytelling, and the kids loved the show. They loved the story, and you could tell it was a great production. That's kind of a little John Waters, too. It's just like having these weird hair colors and stuff. I kind of dig it. I'm interested in seeing it. How cool. I know that there is no easy answer to those things, but I think what's more important than anything is to have the conversation. I also worry sometimes that we worry about doing something wrong, so then we just don't do anything. That, I think, is the only wrong thing.

[44:50] Julie Cohen Theobald: I agree with you. As we've had more and more conversations about diversity, one of the things I say is, I know I'm not going to always say the right things or say it in the right way, but I'm going to keep trying. I think another opportunity that educational theater has is there will be more dialogues after the show. The students create a lobby display that gets across the history, or they might bring in a speaker or a psychologist to kind of talk through the issues. You can really do a lot more when you start doing something in the community and in an educational environment that maybe if people are paying $100 a ticket and coming in and out, it's not going to be as easy to facilitate.

[45:27] Julie Cohen Theobald: We had an incredible production of the Scottsboro Boys at our International Thespian Festival. Susan Stroman actually came out for it.

[45:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Stop it. That's so exciting.

[45:36] Julie Cohen Theobald: They had a talk back after the show, and they had brought in some mentors to work with the students. The whole community was involved. It was really a transformative experience for everybody. That's what I'd like to see more of happening in high schools. That's actually what we're working on, funding through the foundation. One of our projects called Pathway is designed to bring funding into high schools so they can take on a more challenging project that focuses on racial issues and encourages dialogue and brings in mentors. We feel like if we can do that in more and more schools, it's going to transform those programs and make them more diverse and get the communities more involved. Then hopefully that will have a ripple effect beyond schools as all these students grow up and go into theater in different ways.

[46:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's amazing. I was listening to Michelle Obama's podcast. In the first episode, it's her and Barack talking about community. The thing that I felt really hit home to me was that we've become really good about talking about values in schools and at home, but we haven't been great about taking those values into the workplace and institutionalizing them so that they then benefit people outside of home or outside of the educational setting. I feel like that's become a new focus for me in terms of theater, is that the conversation doesn't end when you leave the theater. The way we apply those principles to our lives doesn't stop when you go to work. I've been in my job now for almost 10 years, and we've done a lot of things.

We've grown the organization. We've gotten a lot more members and funding and things like that. What I'm most proud of is we developed our core values. I think they're very inspiring and simple and sticky. There's just four of them. People matter, work together, strive for excellence, and be the person you want to work with.

[47:34] Julie Cohen Theobald: I've had teachers take our poster and use it in their classroom to set expectations for their classroom. It's a great way to set expectations. When things aren't going well, to have something to fall back on to point you in the direction of where you need to go. I definitely believe in that. I think it's really important to articulate what those values are and then spread them around.

[47:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Fantastic. Well, the spread continues. Thank you for sharing that. All right, back into the show, we have a couple more to talk about. We have the baseball game. Speaking of team, right? One of your core values. We have this baseball team. They're all on it. The stakes couldn't be higher in terms of winning this game. Charlie Brown is telling this story by means of his pen pal. He's writing this letter to his pen pal while we're seeing what actually happened to play out in front of us. Long story short, he drops the ball. They lose the game. Everybody hates him. He ends his letter asking if maybe he can come live where the pen pal is.

[48:42] Julie Cohen Theobald: Yeah. It's so sad and sweet.

[48:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's so sad and sweet. You never hear applause after that number you hear. But those Little League moments, I just think about all those Little League games that my brother played and my dad was the coach. It's those quintessential childhood moments. My nephews are so competitive. It's crazy. They're all in basketball, Little League, baseball, all of those things, which I never got into.

[49:18] Julie Cohen Theobald: Well, you did T-ball. My brother did T-ball too. I remember the team when they removed the team. They had to actually hit the ball from the pitcher.

[49:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Never got that far, Julie. Never got that far. I did T-ball. I also did church ball, church basketball, which we would always kid around that it's the only fight that starts with an opening prayer because it would always be so intense. Everybody would take it so seriously, and I never understood why. And that would only make people more mad because if anybody did something good, I would yell leaping lizards.

[49:52] Julie Cohen Theobald: That's when you knew you had to leave sports and go into theater.

[49:55] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Thank you. Then we also have the Glee Club scene, which is they're singing, Oh, Give Me a Home.

[50:02] Julie Cohen Theobald: Home on the Range.

[50:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes. Home on the Range. And meanwhile, somebody has taken, is it Sally's pencil or Schroeder's pencil or somebody has taken a pencil, maybe Linus. I think it's Sally. And the pencil gets passed around and they're having this whole conversation whilst singing Home on the Range. Another just like brilliant little piece of writing where like the internal workings of the number are just so smart and clever.

[50:30] Julie Cohen Theobald: Yes. It's very funny. My second favorite number in this whole show is Little Known Facts, which is Lucy's song. I think this song is, maybe it just reminds me of a couple of my nieces. I have 13. I have 13 nieces and nephews. And I have a couple of nieces that are 100% Lucy's. And this whole thing where you just make up stuff. So Lucy's introducing the world to her baby brother. And this is a fir tree and it's called a fir tree because it grows fur, fur coats. And they keep you warm in the wintertime.

[51:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: In the wintertime.

[51:07] Julie Cohen Theobald: Exactly. It's just so true to life. I think kids always want to be so much more grown up than they are. And then also what I related to with my own little brothers is Linus going, wow, Lucy, wow, tell me more, you know, and then she just feeds off of it.

[51:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes. So cute. Now this whole show ends with a song that always makes me cry. After all of the things that we've talked about that are so sweet and funny and clever and sad, then you have this amazing song called Happiness, which reminds us how simple life is.

[51:43] Julie Cohen Theobald: I was thinking about this song today and I get goosebumps just thinking about it. But just like in the coronavirus situation, that's what like people are finding is, OK, I can't travel and I can't do all this stuff. And there's some nice things, which is I'm spending more time with my family and I'm connecting with people and I'm cooking. And, you know, just those simple, simple parts of life that you when you're busy and just running around, you kind of lose sight of. It's a beautiful song.

[52:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It really is. I've definitely had my share of anxiety this year as my entire industry has shut down. Same for you. And I think that if there is a remedy or medicine for that sort of anxiety, it is this song, which is there's always something beautiful and simple to focus on. And in that simplicity is the profound. It is finding a pencil. It's having a firefly, catching a firefly. It's having a sibling when all of the other crap falls aside. What you're left with is something pure and beautiful and simple. And I really think the Peanuts gang for reminding me of that.

[52:50] Julie Cohen Theobald: I'm going to start listening to that song on a regular basis.

[52:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's a great idea.

[52:54] Julie Cohen Theobald: It's a really good reminder. It's a great message.

[52:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Julie, thank you so much for doing this with me. I've had such a great time. As always, if you have recommendations for shows you'd like us to cover on a musical theater podcast, you can send in those recommendations to a musical podcast at gmail.com. Please follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where you can contact us there at a musical podcast. And you know what? Don't forget about visiting our TeePublic store, where we have lots of designs based on favorite episodes, past and present. Julie, how can we follow everything that's going on with you and the foundation?

[53:29] Julie Cohen Theobald: So our website is educationaltheaterfoundation.org. The foundation is our philanthropy arm. So that's where we take in funding to help underserved schools. Right now we're doing a lot of relief grants for schools who had to cancel their spring musicals and are trying to just get back on their feet.

[53:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I don't think people realize that a lot of funding for school departments comes from selling tickets to their musicals that they haven't been able to do. Actually, two thirds of schools are completely funded by box office. So the teacher's salary might be funded from the school, but the actual shows, the productions, they're self-funding. So these teachers are kind of their own producers. They have to think about their season. They have to think about, we'll do Annie or something that's going to bring in some money, Beauty and the Beast, and then we can do something devised that doesn't have licensing fees. Pirates of Penzance. Yeah, they really have to think that way. And a lot of them do their musicals in the spring and had already put out the money.

A lot of them, oh my gosh, some of them had sets built literally on the stage and left it there and had to come back a month ago and see this thing just sitting the way that it was about to open. So yeah, they definitely are in a lot of need and we know that we need to keep these programs in schools now because if they get cut, it's going to be very hard to get them back.

[54:55] Julie Cohen Theobald: Amen. What are the best ways to give?

[54:57] Julie Cohen Theobald: So if you just go on educationaltheaterfoundation.org into the donate, you can give directly to the Thespian Relief Grants. You can give to a program called Jumpstart Theater, which is starting theater programs in middle schools that don't have a theater program. You can give directly to scholarships for students. So you can kind of go with what your passion is, but that's the best way to give. We'll also have our virtual fundraising gala in January. So that will be announced pretty soon and will be really exciting with both some celebrities as well as seeing what's really going on in the schools and with teachers right now, which is pretty inspiring.

[55:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, cool. I love that. And then we're also on social media. The Foundation Educational Theater Foundation has Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, as well as the Thespian Society, which is our student honor society that we talked about earlier. I honestly didn't know about your organization until this year, and I'm so grateful to have run into it. And I'm really grateful for the work that you're doing. And I hope that many more people will be able to hear about the exciting things that you're bringing to our musical theater landscape.

[55:59] Julie Cohen Theobald: Thank you so much for all you're doing.

[56:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Fantastic. Yeah, we still have a long way to go in building awareness. I had actually not heard of the organization when I heard about this job, because we didn't have a thespian program in my high school. So we still have a long way to go in just spreading the word. And that means we have a lot more potential to impact a lot more students and teachers. So thanks for giving us some exposure with this podcast.

[56:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Hey, I'm thrilled and honored. And everybody out there, have a little bit of happiness.