CARs - The Canine Actors Royale
How was CARs created?
What is CARs?
Productions
Memorable CARs scenes
Character Profiles
How was CARs created?
The year I turned fourteen, around two summers ago, my dad got me tickets to see Les Miserables. This was a big deal, since I'd only been listening to it since I was five, and it had been.... oh, maybe ten years since Les Mis last went on tour. Needless to say, it was stunning, and it is impossible to say enough good things about the production I saw. But this is only one tiny piece that led up to the birth of CARs.
That summer, my dad, my dad's best friend from college, my dad's best friend from college's daughter, and myself went on our first, now annual, Father Daughter camping trip. The other girl, Rebecca, though nice enough at heart, is terribly spoiled and about five years or so younger than I am, so it's needless to say, that I, who have no siblings and thus sometimes have difficulty dealing with people, was slightly - I use that term loosely - annoyed
by her. Hell, she bugged me! She didn't mean to, it just happened. So, I dissapeared into my head phones, listening to Les Miserables, again, and again, and again, until any normal human being would go mad. Suffice to say, I'm not normal.
That's when it happened.
I could see all of those characters, but in stunning color, and beautiful artwork (which, alas, I can never live up to), but there was one thing - They were all dogs. I'm sure Javert would have some slight horror as being depicted as a black German Shepherd, though the cape (black, with red on the bottom) that I could picture him in looked extremely cool. I could see the disheveled Jean Valjean as a aging Golden Retriever. It was perfect! Or I was mad. Both are entirely likely.
And so, that summer, I began trying to do character sketches. What I ended up doing was drawing heads and bodies off of breeds of dogs I thought would work from my dog book, working them, occasionally transplanting a head, until I got it perfect! Like I said, I really couldn't draw them myself. So, I called my best bud Charlene up and told her about the idea. She loved it, and volunteered to help me. This was good, since my plan had been to beg her to help me anyway. However, getting Charlene to work on anything is like getting a mule to... to well, do anything. It has been over a year since the idea was first born, and little has become of Les Miserables.
But this is not entirely true. That winter, while watching a Christmans Carol, an idea struck again. This wasn't limited to one musical! This wasn't limited to one play! I could put dogs in just about any play I wanted! And when I told Charlene my latest idea, she helped give birth to the refined version of CARs. She said "So why don't you just make them an acting troupe if you're going to do so many things?" (She was being sarcastic at the time.) Needless to say, the idea struck.
So, I got to work on drawing ever so slightly better dogs, though it took me a couple tries to get even remotely to where I wanted to be. So, I thought, why not name them? Why not give them their own history, relationships, children? I could see it all playing out before me! And thusly, Cojack, Hal, Penny, Karli, and all the other dogs of CARs were created!
What is CARs?
CARs - Canine Actors Royale - is a troupe of dogs that perform musicals, though I have been toying with the idea of expanding it as far as normal plays and Shakespear stuff. But, for now, it's just musicals.