LORI Leigh reckons it was no coincidence that she brought the award-winning play Dog Meets God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead to New Zealand.
The American director saw the play about the much-loved Charlie Brown characters all grown up, in New York City, and fell in love with it.
The play follows a new Charlie Brown story – The dog is dead, the boy is sad, his sister is a goth, his blanket-toting best buddy is a pot-head, and the rest of the gang are an assortment of sex-crazed, homophobic, narcissistic, hard-partying, typical teens.
“I had no idea what it was going to be about. Sitting there as someone who’d worked in theatre for a few years, I was stunned,” Leigh says. “It was brilliant and hysterical. I felt like someone had punched me in the face by the end of it  - in a good way. I walked out of that theatre in 2005, and thought, ‘I’m going to direct this play’.”
Little did Nashville-raised Leigh know, but she was to direct the premier showing of Dog Meets God on a little island on the other side of the world.
“I always wanted to live overseas, and Americans aren’t great at that. The ones who do travel tend to flock to England or Europe,” she says.
By chance, Leigh met Wellingtonian Alison Walls in grad school in New York. The pair hit it off, and went to see the showing of Dog Meets God together. Walls also loved the play (in a fantastic twist, she is playing the character Trischa in the Wellington premier).
Meeting a Kiwi sealed the New Zealand deal for Leigh, and in 2008 she packed her bags and arrived in the Capital.
“It’s funny how life works. I thought I should go to New Zealand because who does, and it’s probably far more interesting than other places,” she laughs. “I’ve done various other projects since I’ve been here, like being a mentor for Young and Hungry, so I knew I wanted to direct a show, and this was the one. Alison was saying ‘let’s do it’, so we gave the script to some of our actor friends, who thought it was cool. We pitched it to BATS Theatre. They loved it, and slotted us in.”
Leigh says Dog Meets God isn’t just fun, games, and satire.
“You’re watching something and you’re relaxing into it, and then suddenly you’re jolted. I thought, ‘wait a second, this isn’t just comedy, it’s quite serious, this is life’,” she says. “Some of the themes are very timeless. It’s about cruelty, which Charles M Schulz has said was one of his premises for Charlie Brown. There’s a bullying theme. When the cast and I initially met, I said ‘who here has been bullied?’ and everyone put their hands up. Then I said, ‘who has bullied?’ and again, everyone raised their hand.”
You don’t have to be familiar with the Charlie Brown stories to enjoy the play, Leigh says, but she is a die-hard fan.
“My favourite toy at home was Snoopy. I can really relate to Charlie Brown, I feel like in any given thing you have one winner, and everyone else is a loser – which he thinks. He’s a questioner, and I’ve been someone who’s always questioned everyone,” she laughs, and adds, “I always felt my sister was Lucy, because she’s a bit bossy.”
Dog Meets God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, 8.30pm, BATS Theatre, August 3-14.