Christian Gonzalez missed middle school – well, the usual public school version anyway. So playing middle schooler Greg in “Wimpy Kid’s Diary” on the Orlando Family Stage gives him a taste of what happened.
“I feel like I’m getting middle school trauma from doing this show,” he says with a laugh. “I knew middle school was scary, but…”
In a musical based on Jeff Kinney’s bestselling book series, “Wimpy Kid” Greg is determined to be popular at every cost, whether to paint the political rivals of the Student Council or drop a friend marching on his drummer. He definitely makes bad choices and definitely hurts people’s feelings, but that makes it more interesting to portray him as an adult.
“His needs are just to be liked by people – that resonates with me a lot,” says Gonzalez. He then thinks about some of Greg’s dirty tricks: “Well, maybe not the extreme he does!”
But at the same time, Greg serves as a warning to the children in the audience. The audience eats his antics, but they hope they collect something from his mistakes.
“I’m glad he has influenced his behavior,” says Gonzalez. “That’s a big life lesson to learn.”
Gonzalez, who grew up in Ocala and still lives there, attended school when he was younger, but switched to homeschooling for 6-9 years.
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“I’m not a fighter, I’m a lover of the heart,” he says with a laugh. “I’m not a conflicted person.”
Then the memory gets mixed in.
“I had a bully in elementary school,” he recalls, but adults stopped behaving badly.
What about when he returns to Westport High School in Ocala for his 10th grade?
Gonzalez had the resources that his alter ego Greg didn’t make the story.
He was also more athletic than Greg.
“I wanted to be a basketball player,” says Gonzalez – until “tearing all the ligaments in my left ankle.”
So he tried his hand in the theatre and acted as an elective. “And I fell in love with it.”
His first role in Orlando was “Boo’s Junie B. Jones’ Fall Production” on the Orlando Family Stage, another child’s favorite based on the book series.
His experience in the theatre was rewarding.
“Every time I was rehearsing there were positive assertions,” says Gonzalez.
But that doesn’t mean that rehearsals were always easy. It was a struggle to get Greg out of the show in his quest for coolness as Jonah White turned his back on his self-proclaimed best friend Laurie, a quirky and sensitive boy who was obsessed with the gorgeous pop singers he performed on the Orlando Family stage.
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“The way Greg handles Laurie is incredible to me,” says Gonzalez. “In the rehearsal, I wanted to say to Jonah, ‘Sorry, I’m a terrible person.’ ”
But Gonzalez understands where Greg came from.
“We have to think about how ordinary kids react to social situations. We’ll probably be a little more extreme,” he says. “I’m thinking about how big a problem has become for me when I was a kid. He just wants to be cool all the time.”
He thinks the pressure that comes from our wired world makes younger people think they are even more coarse than he does.
“As an adult, I still struggle with self-esteem issues. I can’t imagine being a child right now,” he says. “If there was social media in middle school, I don’t know what I could have done.”
And Gonzalez thinks that during the show the audience of “Whimsical Children’s Diary” might do one or two calculations.
“They might think, ‘Maybe I’m not nice at times,'” he says. “Or ‘Maybe this isn’t a good thing I did.’
He hopes Greg can also teach them lessons.
Follow us at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email us at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Find out more entertainment news at orlandosentinel.com/entternationment.
“Wimpy Kid’s Diary”
Length: 1 hour, no break Location: Orlando Repertoire Theatre, 1001 E. Princeton Street Orlando Time: Until April 20th Cost: $20-$48 Information: orlandofamilystage.com
Original issue: April 1st, 2025 5am EDT
