'Bang, Bang' a Cautionary Play
Students share horror of shooting
Monday, April 5, 1999
EUGENE, Ore. - The 16 drama students in Bang, Bang, You’re Dead haven’t had to do a lot of imagining to put themselves in their roles. They had real-life roles in the school shooting that spawned the play, which opens here Wednesday.
Written by award-winning playwright William Mastrosimone, the 40-minute play uses elements of the shooting last May as a jumping-off point for his cautionary tale about school violence.
The student actors seem intensely dedicated to sharing their experience. "We want people to realize this could happen at any school," says Chalan Moon, 17, one of two actors playing Josh, a fictional shooter. "We have to use our experience to help others," says Rebecca Sanchez, 17.
"Some people think we’re exploiting the shooting," says Nick Smith, 16, who plays Josh in alternate performances. "But we’re in this to get the message out."
"I don’t want any other school to go through the hell that Thurston went through," says actor Nichole Buckholtz, 18, shot in the leg last May.
It was May 21 when a student opened fire in the cafeteria, killing two students and wounding 23 at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., near Eugene. Kip Kinkel, now 16 and a freshman at the time, is in jail here awaiting trial in September on charges that he killed his parents at home and then went to the school, where he shot his fellow students.
Mastrosimone, who lives near Seattle, says he was inspired to write the play a few days after the Springfield incident when his 15-year-old son came home from school with an alarming story. A student had scrawled on the blackboard, "I’m going to kill everyone in this class and the teacher too." The culprit later said it was all a joke. But, the author says, "I, like every other parent, was shaken to my core because we understood that our kids are no longer safe anywhere."
"The national tragedy of kids killing kids sweeps the country, and no one, not the schools, not the parents, not the pundits nor the government, has a clue," Mastrosimone says.
The play has no answers, he says, but he hopes it will reach the potential shooters with its message of opportunities lost.
It is set in the jail cell of Josh, 14, the night after he kills five fellow students. His victims appear around him on stage as figments of his imagination. As the play begins, they demand to know why they’re dead.
"Why me?" Michael asks. "We played ball together. You were awesome on the field. You were unstoppable."
Josh replies: "Survival of the fittest, baby."
Michael continues: "And you were only a freshman. You could’ve been team captain in your senior year. Why did you kill me? I never hurt you."
Josh again: "It was more fun than droppin’ dudes in a video game."
Katie joins in: "Why me, Josh?"
"Why not?" he responds. "World’s overpopulated. I wanted to do my part."
"You liked me," she says. "Why’d you have to kill me?"
"Felt like it, OK?" he retorts. "Happy now?"
Smart-mouth replies give way to fear and regret in the play as it revisits Josh’s difficult experiences with guns, teachers, girls and his parents. The enormity of it grows on Josh as the students detail what they’ll miss in death and what Josh will miss in life.
"This is not meant to be an easy thing to take," cast member Joshua Wilson, 18, says.
Directing Wednesday’s production is Thurston’s drama instructor, Mike Fisher, 37. He was in the cafeteria just after the shooting.
The play is being staged at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene. "If it’s on campus, the wounds are too fresh and too deep," he says.
The play is sponsored by Ribbon of Promise, a national group formed in Springfield after the shooting to fight school violence. Bang, Bang is "a tool to get communities across the country to talk about it...before they experience something like we had," executive director Cindy Brown says.
A different production of the play will will we staged Thursday by students in Enumclaw , Wash., at the junior high school that Mastrosimone’s son attends.
Meanwhile, in Springfield, memories of last May’s incident remain vivid, Thurston principal Larry Bentz says. His 1,450 students go to class and enjoy sports and activities, but the effects linger, he says. When a fire engine goes by, "you see people tense up." Some students’ grades have suffered.
The principal says he’s had nearly 25 calls about the play, mostly hostile and frequently "from people who don’t know anything about it." There’s no organized opposition to the play, he says, but there are mixed opinions.
Rebecca Lynn, whose daughter was wounded and has since changed schools, says she supports the play’s message but not its presentation now.
The principal says he rebuffed offers for movies and TV shows, but he and Fisher decided this was an exceptional opportunity to let the students try to teach others.
As the play draws to a close, the students remind the shooter: "It’s just the beginning for you...You’ll have us in your head until you are dead."
Josh cries out, "I didn’t know it would be forever. ... I thought I could just hit the reset button and start over."
LIKE LOTS of local folks, Springfield Fire Chief Dennis Murphy was appalled when he first heard that nationally known playwright William Mastrosimone was working with Thurston High School drama students to produce a play about school violence.
"Just the title - 'Bang, Bang, You're Dead.' I thought, 'That's horrible - how irreverent after what happened here,' ' Murphy said.
The tall, forthright chief was among emergency workers who were seared by the carnage when they responded to a mass shooting in the Thurston cafeteria last May 21. The experience prompted Murphy, his department's union president, and others to organize the Ribbon of Promise campaign to try to end school violence.
When Murphy first heard about "Bang, Bang" last winter, he never could have imagined Ribbon of Promise endorsing the show, much less sponsoring two local productions. But that's exactly what will happen this Wednesday at the Hult Center.
"My opposition was on the basis of prejudice," Murphy says now. "I was so busy prejudging it, I hadn't even seen it."
When he finally did, he agreed with other Ribbon of Promise board members and local youth behavior specialists that the show could be a powerful tool for prevention and intervention.
Many critics initially assumed that the play was an attempt by Mastrosimone to cash in on a local tragedy. Beneath his Hollywood-style beret, however, the playwright is just another dad worried about his kids.
True, he began writing "Bang, Bang" soon after the Thurston shootings. But a more immediate catalyst was a threat of similar violence scrawled on the blackboard at his son's Enumclaw, Wash., high school on May 22.
"I remember standing with my wife the next morning, watching our children leave for school, and wondering if they would make it home," Mastrosimone told me in Bend in January. We'd both just watched the Thurston cast present "Bang, Bang" to an enthusiastic crowd of fellow thespians at a regional high school drama festival.
Furthermore, Mastrosimone made sure there's no cash to cash in on. He will charge no royalties for any productions of play, and the copyrighted script stipulates that no admission be charged. He intends for the play to be performed by and for teens in schools all over the country. To that end, he is posting the script on the Internet (www.bangbangyouredead.com) for free downloading.
Ribbon of Promise (www.ribbonofpromise.org) will post discussion guides for students, teachers and parents that can be downloaded and used with audiences around the country.
AFTER SEEING the show and talking to kids who saw it in Bend, here are my reasons for endorsing Ribbon of Promise's endorsement:
There's nothing in this show that glorifies or glamorizes violence. It focuses largely on the lasting consequences of an impulsive act, for the shooter as well as the victims. It also points up the rippling consequences for family, friends, schools and communities. Mastrosimone wisely encouraged his young actors to improvise in lamenting what they forever lose. The real-life particulars of teen life - "cruising, windows down, music up" - ring true.
The depiction of consequences also argues against suicide, a student in the Bend audience told me. "As someone who's considered suicide many times, it really did make me think about what I'd miss if I was dead," she said.
"Bang, Bang" paints a riveting picture of a troubled kid's ability to manipulate his parents. I found it hard to believe, until several teens in Bend told me, "Oh, I totally do that."
The show properly indicts the violent television, movies and video games that desensitize our kids and train them to find amusement in killing.
It reminds teens of the potentially deadly effects of teasing, taunting and ostracizing troubled classmates.
The show is not perfect. Like one Thurston shooting victim who wrote to deride "Bang, Bang" after my column on the Bend performance, I found a scene implicating hunting to be melodramatic and unconvincing.
Nor is it for everyone - particularly here.
Ribbon of Promise is aware it could prove troubling for those still traumatized by events here, executive director Cindy Brown said. The group went so far as to check with parents who lost children last May before proceeding, she said.
"My personal opinion is that many here probably shouldn't attend," she said. "But it's important to us at Ribbon of Promise that people across the country not forget that we have a problem we need to deal with. And we see this play as a tremendous tool for that."
Karen McCowan can be reached at 338-2422 or via e-mail at kmccowan@guardnet.com.