BULLYING COLLECTION HELPS SHEDS LIGHT ON IMPORTANT SUBJECT
Show #15: The Bullying Collection Where: Longfields-Davidson Heights Secondary School
Director: student Aaron Casey and teacher Liza Wilson
Bullying, the best-known stereotype of high school. LongfieldsDavidson Heights Secondary School did an excellent job demonstrating many different types of bullying and the effects it can have in their production of The Bullying Collection.
Written in 2015, The Bullying Collection features 10 stories from 10 authors about bullying. Longfields-Davidson Heights Secondary School performed scenes written by C.R. Wright, E.M. Bell, Aaliyah Williams, Jonathan Rand, Kendra Martin, Alan Haehnel, Jonathan Dorf and Sam Guzman. To link all the stories together they added two more scenes written by Aaron Casey, Liza Wilson and Sara Gebara, all of whom are students at the school.
The Bullying Collection contains a large variety of scenarios, ranging from nerds planning revenge to a student president being forced to give a speech concerning a student who recently committed suicide. LongfieldsDavidson Heights Secondary School did a superb job portraying several different scenarios, with many actors doing great jobs in two or three different roles.
Bullies Anonymous showed bullies being taught to be nice by a guidance counsellor. Marlies Nied did an excellent job as guidance counsellor Jane, talking to each of the bullies calmly about how they should not bully and have empathy. However, her acting shone when she lost it on the bullies and starting yelling at them, showing great versatility in her character. The bully who stood out the most was Kevin (Tys Loyens). The other bullies would make meaningful comments, and instead he would reminisce about lunch, or whatever food he was thinking of at the moment. Loyens did an excellent job being an entertaining character to laugh at.
None of the scenes showed actors working together more than that of F.A.B.U.L.O.U.S. Sarge (Ike Fardy) led the group with his confident demeanour. Grunt (Trent Ogilvie) was the muscle of the bully-busting group, and did a great job acting stupid until the end, when he blurted out an extremely sophisticated statement, adding to the comedic feel of the scene. All six members made an impressive
group, with each character having a unique personality. Another standout feature of this scene was the sound: Each time Mainframe (Onnika Caldeira) rewound or paused time, there were perfectly timed sound effects. Accurate sound effects were not just limited to this scene, but they were featured in almost every scene.
Despite the comedy in most scenes, the last scene provided the exact opposite, with a dead serious series of monologues depicting seven students’ stories during a school shooting. The shooting provided an ending to the bullying of Aaron (Sam
Pomerant) as he finally broke and shot up his school. The lighting in this scene was great as it helped establish a much more serious mood. Almost all the lights went out as seven spotlights illuminated the actors. Some actors stood in the middle of their spotlight, others sat on the edge, providing the feeling of dread and grief. The lighting in this scene provided a contrast, as it was a much darker scene, in
multiple ways.
Due to the school shootings in the past year, the play was very impactful. The actors were all extremely serious, when the scene called for it, to help get the message across. This play conveyed the message that bullying itself is not only bad, but also what it leads to is often worse, which is an extremely important message in this world — and, unfortunately, needs to be spread.