Terry Dieschbourg describes it as a “sick, mother feeling” in her stomach whenever she hears about a school shooting.
The first time the Park Ridge mother felt that gut-wrenching helplessness was 12 years ago as she drove her daughter, Megan, home from preschool. The car radio jolted her with news that Laurie Dann had invaded a Winnetka elementary school and shot six children, killing an 8-year-old boy.
“I started thinking, `Where are we leaving our children? Where are they safe?’ ” she said.
This spring, Dieschbourg has been bracing herself to watch Megan, now a senior at Maine South High School in Park Ridge, portray a shooting victim in a class production of “Bang Bang You’re Dead,” a play about a high school freshman who has killed his parents and five students in his school cafeteria.
In the play, the dead students visit the freshman, Josh, in his jail cell, demanding, “Why’d you kill me?” The play examines the contributing factors, from a fascination with guns, hunting and suicide, to trouble with his parents, school and girls, that drove Josh to kill.
“I have such mixed emotions about the play,” Dieschbourg said. “My very first reaction was `Eeeeuuuw, I don’t like this, Meg. I don’t like to see you even pretend to die.’ “
In the wake of deadly school shootings in Jonesboro, Ark., Springfield, Ore., and Littleton, Colo., the response across the country has been tighter school security measures and the introduction of violence-awareness programs.
“Bang Bang You’re Dead,” written by a Seattle-area father and screenwriter, is one of the more controversial programs because it demands that students act out a shooting in front of peers.
The Maine South production will be performed only once, April 5, at the fine arts department’s annual open house. Counselors will be on hand to prepare the audience for what they will see and to discuss the emotions the play might generate.
Posted at its own Web site, www.bangbangyouredead.com, the play has been performed more than 300 times in the last year in the United States, including at Grayslake Community High School in Lake County last month, said the author, William Mastrosimone.
“The kids who are doing this play, they are telling the potential killers out there, `We know you are out there. This is the damage you will be doing. Stop and think about your life. You are going to kill all your possibilities, too,’ ” Mastrosimone said.
But the title and subject matter alone have been enough to scare off other school administrators.
Mastrosimone wrote it in the middle of the night two years ago, after a student at his sons’ junior high near Seattle scrawled, “I’m going to kill everyone in this class and the teacher too.”
At the time, the nation was still numb from a school shooting only weeks before in Springfield, Ore., where two students died and 25 were wounded. The freshman gunman had killed his parents the day before.
Mastrosimone had the audacity to ask the same school to start rehearsing the play.
“When I was first approached about the play, I turned it down,” said Thurston High School Principal Larry Bentz.
But after the drama teacher gave his endorsement and began readings, Bentz said he could see the therapeutic effect. He gave his blessing–as long as it was not performed at the school.
A year after the shooting, two of the wounded students performed in the first “Bang Bang You’re Dead” production in nearby Eugene, Ore.
“The wounds are too fresh” for the play to be performed at Thurston High, Bentz said, “but I certainly recommend that this be produced at other schools.”
However, some of those other schools also have been pondering whether they want to take on such a production.
At Clinton High School in Clinton, Ill., the administration has put the brakes on the play indefinitely, said D. Ann Jones, chairman of the high school’s fine arts department.
“It’s a great play, a great play,” Jones said, “but the title–for many people in my community–it is scary. The administrators are very concerned about it just because of the questions that are raised, and there are no answers provided in the play.”
In Chicago, where on Monday shots were fired before classes began in Parkside Elementary School, Chicago Public Schools administrators had not heard about the play but were intrigued.
“This is certainly something I would want to make sure I knew more about,” said Sue Gamm, school district chief of specialized services. “So it might be a good play? I just assumed this would be a horrible play” based on the title.
Mastrosimone and school administrators who have seen the play say it can be cathartic for students.
At Maine South last fall, drama teacher John Muszinski had administrators read it before he introduced it to students in his third-year drama class.
Maryanne Kelly, the director of student personnel services at Maine South, said she had deep misgivings about the play at first.
“I found it disturbing,” she said. “I had to think long and hard about whether this is something we want to expose our kids to. But the reality is, they are already exposed to it.”
After students read the play, they clamored to do it for their class project.
No guns are used in the play, and the only props are a bottle of ketchup and flashlights for lighting.
The hardest part of the play, students said, is after Josh kills his parents.
Courtney Stevens, 16, who plays Josh’s mother, sings “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” as she lies on the floor next to Kevin Goss, 18, who plays the father.
Standing over them, Josh rants, “You made me do this. I wanted to kill you but I didn’t want you dead. . . . Why’s it so easy for me to talk to you now?”
At that point, most of the cast is crying.
“It’s so hard for me to stay composed and not to cry,” Stevens said before the rehearsal. “It makes me think of my mom, and when I think of my mom I think, `Oh my gosh, how could anyone do that to their parents?’ “
Antonello Di Benedetto, who plays Josh, said he only recently told his mother about his role in the play.
“She was like, `Whoa,’ ” he said, putting his hand to his heart as he shook his head. “I don’t think she is going to talk to me for a while.”
After a rehearsal last week, Maine South psychiatrist Jay Kyp-Johnson asked the students, “Why did you want to do this play?”
Megan Dieschbourg, who plays Josh’s ex-girlfriend, leaned her head on the shoulder of Di Benedetto, a longtime friend.
“Because it’s real,” she said.
