Youth Will Be Served

Youth will be served, several times a night this weekend. McKinleyville Union School District with Shake the Bard Company presents Willy Wonka, Jr., a musical adaptation of the Roald Dahl tale, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's at the Arcata Playhouse Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 PM, with a matinee Sunday at 2, and again next weekend. Information at 496-4056 or from Shake the Bard.

Arcata High presents the spoof, It Was A Dark and Stormy Night in the Multipurpose Room on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30. 825-2400.

Last but not least, Ferndale Rep presents its teen show this weekend only, called Bang, Bang, You're Dead, a play concerning school violence. It's at the Rep on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM. More info at the Rep.

Here's an essay on the production written by one of the participants, Brooke Marino:

Bang, Bang! Just like that, and you’re dead, all the life you haven’t lived flowering with petals of red from your chest. What do you think about? What is it like to die? It is a difficult question; I know because it is this question my fellow cast members and I have spent the past weeks exploring as we prepared for the Ferndale Repertory Theatre Teen Production, Bang, Bang, You’re Dead.

Bang, Bang tells the story of Josh, a troubled young boy who decides to solve his problems with a rifle and a box of bullets, but who is haunted by the ghosts and memories of those he killed. The play was written by William Mastrosimone in the wake of school massacres that occurred in Paducah, Jonesboro, and Springfield to raise awareness about school violence and is loosely based on the shooting in Springfield, Oregon in 1998 when fifteen year old Kip Kinkel shot both his parents before going to Thurston High School and murdering two of his classmates. It was first performed April 9, 1999, just 11 days prior to the shooting at Columbine High School.

Bang, Bang is very much and ensemble piece. The cast of 11 actors consists of Josh, the five deceased classmates, and a chorus of five actors who play various roles throughout the show. In addition to the small cast, the show is short, approximately 45 minutes, and utilizes few props. Instead, the production relies on the actors’ movements and tones to create the mood.

For me, the experience of working on this production has been both challenging and rewarding. In the first act, my character, Emily, has a dramatic death scene. To be so uninhibited was a challenge for me as an actor. At home, alone in my room with the music cranked high, I practiced screaming and groaning, staggering and falling, until I lay panting on my back on the carpet. In rehearsals too, under the direction of directors Nan Voss and Victor Howard, we practiced prolonged deaths for my benefit, drawing them out until they bordered on the ridiculous. It has been hard for me to be so bold, so loud, but it has been good for me too, given me a voice I didn’t know I had. It has also been enjoyable; I could not have picked a nicer group of people to die with.

Yet more challenging even than the physical aspect of death was to really get a grip on what it would be like to be shot. What would be going through my head? How would I respond to the sight of blood on my hands, my own blood? My answer surprised me, because when I was really able to place myself in that moment, what I felt was more than fear. I felt anguish and a feverish desire to live, to rebel against death. And again it was the group death session which helped me realize this, because it infuriated me, though I knew it was all pretend, to see the others, my friends, writhe on the ground, their faces etched with pain from imaginary wounds. It infuriated me as would the ruin of anything beautiful or in its prime, like new blooms plucked only to wither in vases in dark rooms. I believe it is this which makes school shootings so tragic, not just the needless violence, but the death of youth. Working on Bang Bang has made school shootings real for me in a way news articles never could.

In this production we deal with a heavy subject. There are many layers of emotion involved: anger, hurt, disgust, guilt. As actors, our job is to capture these emotions and deliver our lines in a way which will impact the audience. It is easy, when reading an article in a newspaper or magazine, to be removed, not to allow the stories to affect you. Indeed, there is so much negative media today that if we did let it all in, we would be a nation of clinically depressed. And yet, it is important, nay imperative, that people understand, feel, are impacted, because how else will anything change?

School violence is still very much a problem in today’s society. Since Bang Bang was written, ten years ago, two of the deadliest school shootings in history have occurred in our country - one at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and last year’s massacre at Virginia Tech. In just the past month, there have been five incidences of gun-related school violence including the shooting at Northern Illinois University which left five dead. Obviously, this is a problem which needs to be addressed, not dismissed, needs to be thought about and faced. In the words of the play write William Mastrosimone, Bang Bang You're Dead" is a resource for dealing with a broken world that's violent, unhealthy, unfair, and beyond the power of anyone to fix except today's generation.

Bang Bang has given us a lot of freedom to personalize our characters, thereby giving their story and fate added reality and meaning. Many of our own memories and dreams have been inserted into a series of “I’ll misses” and “I’ll nevers” during which the deceased reminisce and berate Josh with the lists of things they will never get to experience. This makes it real for us actors (I really would miss my sister’s calls and the smell of rain on pavement) and also connects us to the larger story and whispers to us all that we are not so removed. This could happen anywhere, and by inserting ourselves into the story, we are, in a way, bringing the message of Springfield and Columbine, Virginia Tech and NIU, to the schools and theatres of Humboldt County.