Interview: Choreographer Bethany White Shares the Magic of A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS at Queensbury Theatre

Queensbury Theatre, West Houston’s historic non-profit theatre located in CityCentre, has announced its return of Main Stage shows with A Charlie Brown Christmas this December. A Charlie Brown Christmas will be holding its second set of shows this week through December 23rd. 

BroadwayWorld Houston had the chance to talk with Bethany White, the choreographer for the production as well as the Director of Education and Resident Choreographer for Queensbury Theatre. She shares with us what we can look forward to in this magical holiday production, such as an extended musical encore and a holiday market that will accompany the show!

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Can you tell us about your background, what your title is at Queensbury Theatre, and what your role is within this production of A Charlie Brown Christmas?

I am the Director of Dance and resident choreographer since the theater opened its doors with its new space in 2015. Kristina and I started at the same time, and she started as the Director of Education and is now the Executive Director. I basically handle everything dance-related, whether it's the dance classes for the Tribble School, the choreography for mainstage productions, or for our Bridge Program. I do whatever I can to get all of our productions and operations off-the-ground. In terms of Charlie Brown Christmas specifically, I choreographed the show.

Now, in your own words, what is A Charlie Brown Christmas?

It’s a delightful treat! It’s so funny, and it makes me think of The Muppets in a way that it's entertaining for adults and kids at the same time. It's one of those few shows and few sets of characters that fits this classification. The specificity of the characters and the way they interact is joyful and funny, and there's things that make the grown-ups chuckle and the kids chuckle. It is just so endearing with lots of heart, and what I love about what we've done with it is the actual book of Charlie Brown Christmas only lasts about 35 to 40 minutes. So, once that part of the show is complete, we go into an encore section, which is where we have the Peanuts come back out and start to sing their favorite Christmas carols as the Peanuts characters. So, we've extended the show so the runtime is more along the lines of 75 minutes long (we don’t want to go too long for our youngest audience members). So, our show is filled with song, dance, and the classic story that everybody knows, so that's what the audience is in for when they come to see it.

That’s so fun! I love how you have extended the story to showcase the talent of your performers. As you said, I’m sure many of our BroadwayWorld readers will also be aware of the iconic animated cartoon, so are there any differences between the stage show, your version of the show, and the animated version?

The book of the stage show is almost exactly like the animated cartoon. It really is word-for-word, and the music is the same, that nostalgic Vince Guaraldi Trio music. So, if you’re a fan of the animated cartoon, it’s really fun to see it all come to life on stage. There's moments in the cartoon that we absolutely said, we've got to put that in! For example, everybody knows that moment where Lucy falls off her stool, when Schroeder falls back from the piano, or the clinking nickels…All those moments are just so fun, so they'll get all of that.

After that’s complete, the Peanuts will then go on to sing a bunch of their favorite Christmas carols. In the cartoon of Charlie Brown Christmas, the actors really only sing at the beginning and at the end, and most of what's in the middle is really just the underscoring. It's all spoken, but I was so pleased with the turnout we had at our auditions. We have some incredible Houston talent hired for the show, and they are all incredible vocalists. So, we (the creative team) asked, what can we do to showcase their voices a little bit more than just the opening song and closing song to Charlie Brown Christmas? We thought it would be fun–in an effort to extend the show a little bit–to have each of the actors pick their favorite Christmas carol and then just wail. Let me tell you, their voices are just incredible. Austin Colburn (who is playing Linus) was recently Clyde in Bonnie and Clyde, and he was in Drag Wonderettes. His voice is nuts, and he's an incredible dancer, so he just goes to town on All I Want for Christmas is You; it's a show stopper.

So, why did you decide to present A Charlie Brown Christmas at Queensbury Theatre this year?

I think–first and foremost–this is technically our first professional mainstage division show back from COVID; we have not had professional theater since 2019. We’ve had our education wing, and you spoke with Kristina about our Bridge Program with Spring Awakening. The vision of Queensbury Theatre is to serve theatrical professionals and actors in all stages of their career, whether it's their education or their starts into professional theater or as a professional working actor in the Houston theatrical community. So, this really finally fulfills that vision and brings that last piece of the puzzle back after we had to take a hiatus due to COVID.

In our return, our priority was to find something to welcome the community back into our doors. We want something family-friendly, something where we can make it a community event and people of all ages would come…something for the kids but also something that the adults are going to enjoy. I mean, every adult loves hearing that Vince Guaraldi music and knows the cartoon. One of my favorite parts as the choreographer are the little dances they all do in the carton. We spent a lot of time in rehearsal one day just watching the 3 1/2 minute video of the cartoon where they just danced, and it's so fun. We worked hard to recreate that.

Going back to your question, we felt like Charlie Brown Christmas really checked that box in terms of family-friendly. It was also something in terms of scale that we thought we could handle at this time. We wanted to do something that we knew we could do well. We wanted to wait until we knew we could have a quality product to come back with, and we felt like Charlie Brown Christmas–when it comes to the size of the cast and needs for scenic and costuming– was a great choice for us.

We could really ensure a high quality of product at the end of the run, and like I said, the important thing was community. We wanted to make it a holiday experience for the community–rather than just a show–to welcome them back into our doors after so long. So, what we're doing is before the weekend shows, we have a holiday market where we're welcoming local vendors from Houston to come in and and sell their artisan crafts. I know one of our vendors is someone who takes old Broadway scenic elements and creates handbags and other pieces with them. So, when you come to the theater, you get to the market, and we'll have hot cocoa for the kids, some Peanuts characters out in the lobby (ready to take pictures and talk to the kids), and then of course, you get to enjoy the show. So, we wanted to make it a real community event for the holidays!

Sounds amazing! Going back into the show itself, how has the rehearsal process been like? How long have you been meeting for, and how have you been developing this show?

We’ve been rehearsing. This is our third week here–our tech week–so we had two weeks of rehearsal and then tech. It’s just been so much fun. The cast has been so great. They are wonderful and so supportive of each other in the process. Kristina and I love the energy of collaboration in the rehearsal room, and we love what they bring to the table. They've brought so much specificity to each of these characters to bring them to life. A lot of it is based on what we've seen in the cartoon, but then a lot of it is just so smart and fun, especially with that encore section.. Seeing what they've come up with especially in terms of when they sing in the encore section has been really fun to create. So, it's been a real treat and joy.

Since this show is based off of such a fun and fantastical cartoon, are there any fun design and/or technical elements that we can look forward to in A Charlie Brown Christmas?

Our technical director Michael Burka and our properties master Denise Marin have done a great job bringing the cartoon to life. I love Denise's vision in terms of the properties; they have been oversized cartoons (large with a thick border around them), and the actors can use, hold, and interact with everything. It is just so cute and charming, it has a uniformity to it, and it makes you chuckle. For example, Charlie Brown writes Sally’s letter to Santa where she asks for cold, hard cash, and he's using a giant pencil, and then he's got a giant mailbox where they all go to get their Christmas cards. Denise has just done a great job with her vision in terms of an aesthetic for the properties.

The scenic elements are also great. Michael's done a great job bringing all the technical and scenic elements together. There will be snow, of course; it can't be winter time without it snowing, which is fun. The characters do go ice skating at the top of the show, so it's fun to see them all do that.

What I like about it is that it's not overdone. It’s minimal, and it's just enough to bring us into the world, but then it gives the actors the freedom not only to move around and be very physical, but to bring us further into the world through their choices rather than a big, old bulky set on the stage.

What has been your favorite part of the rehearsal process?

I'll say two parts. The actor playing Snoopy–Adam Kral–is actually a former Tribble School for the Performing Arts student. He was a dance student of mine; he started when he was in 6th grade, I believe. Now, he's a working actor in Houston. Snoopy’s whole part is really not spoken; it's all physical, and it's all dance, and he's just done an incredible job bringing the physicality to life. For every moment where he's on stage, every inch of his body is a dog...is Snoopy. However, he's not on all-fours; he is allowing us to believe that he's this silly, crazy dog but through dance and walking. It’s just been a treat to see him go through that process, discover those choices, and find those moments. Last night (in our preview), we only had about 10 guests as our final dress preview just to gauge audience response and interaction. I had three people tell me their favorite part was this part where Snoopy gets embarrassed, and he takes around a full minute to just roll off the stage, roll around, and slink around…it was a purely physical and silent moment, and it was just hilarious, so that's definitely one of my favorite parts of this show to watch.

It's also been fun to see the development of the encore section of the show. A lot of the girls come together to sing “Winter Song”, and it brought me to tears the first time they did it. It was wonderful how strongly they connected to each other and to the lyrics of the song and how beautifully they told the story from the perspective of a Peanut but also from their own perspective. It’s almost like the Peanuts had a moment to step outside of their world and reflect upon the world around them, and it made me in the audience reflective, as well. It just gave me all the feels–for lack of a better word–and it was gorgeous. With all the the childlike comedy and youthfulness of the Peanuts, to have that beautiful exquisite moment vocally was just a wonderful balance.

Is there anything else you would like to share about A Charlie Brown Christmas?

We are just so excited to be back in the Houston professional theater scene and welcome the theatrical community back at our home for something that's just going to leave you feeling good. Also, we announced yesterday that we are doing a professional production of “The Wizard of Oz”, so it goes along with the theme of welcoming Houston back home to our theater in July, 2024.

To wrap this up for our readers of BroadwayWorld to know, when and where are the performances of A Charlie Brown Christmas and how can they get tickets?

You can get tickets and attend the show Queensbury Theater, 12777 Queensbury Lane, and we opened on Friday, December 15th at 7:00 pm. The show runs about an hour and 15 minutes. This week, we have evening performances Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and we also have a matinee this Saturday (so we close on the 23rd, the Saturday before Christmas Eve). You can get tickets at queensburytheatre.org (they start at $30) along with updates on auditions, future productions, or anything like that. Just visit our website and follow us on social media!

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Tickets, show times, and more details are available at https://www.queensburytheatre.org/.

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