Stickboy: A Vivid Jumble of Impressions

Photo by Tim Matheson

Don’t miss Stickboy, a contemporary opera written by Neil Weisensel and Shane Koyczan playing at the Vancouver Playhouse Oct 23 – Nov 7.

 

I don’t know if you’ve seen the posters around town with phrases like “Nobody likes you.” scribbled in white on a vast black background. It's an evocative campaign. This opera got under my skin. As it was supposed to. I hope it gets under yours. My response was anything but objective:

 

As the lights dimmed my inner defiant child hunkered low in her seat, sneering at this politically correct mollycoddling idea of an opera about bullying that was going to tour in schools next year. What can adults know? How could anyone at the Vancouver Opera possibly understand my pain? The pain of the playground that adults (a different species as far as I can tell) grossly misunderstood or, occasionally, participated in. How could anyone ever communicate the paranoia, the rich madness that felt more like a bad drug trip than anything else? Bullying isn't about the details, it's not about the physicality of things, it's more about what you believe as a result. It's about the world that is created by the vivid imagination of a child with huge, dark and mysterious feelings. The explanations. The fear and the shame. It's a very personal hell. How could anyone communicate that? Why would anyone want to try?

 

This defiant, proud and terrified child scoffed when the boy was being beaten up at school. “Is that all?” she thought. “If only I had been bullied like that. He’s so lucky!” Later in the narrative when the boy transfers to a new school and remarks “I have no friends yet, but no enemies either”, she stood on her chair, shaking her fist and screamed “No enemies! That’s all you need. You don’t deserve friends. You're in heaven! Don’t mess it up by thinking you can have more.” I was disgusted by this weakling, by this sympathetic tale. And I saw in myself how quickly the bullied turn to bullies.

 

The sophisticated teenager in me, jaded and wary of the world, who wore her pain as a badge balked at the comparison between high-school and war. High-school is not organized. It is not a conspiracy, it is chaos. There are no good guys and bad guys. The school system is not something to be survived before you begin your “real, normal life”. It is a preparation for the world, your first introduction to the herd. Phase one. After the performance a friend and I discussed the pros and cons of pulling bullied children out of school. “Never!” my teenager thought. If they can’t survive high-school how will they do in the real world where they are forced to interact with others on a daily basis for longer hours with no parents to come home to? My friend argued that now she is an adult she can choose who she interacts with in her life, who she works and socializes with. I disagreed. There is nowhere to hide. The unfriendly multitude are out there and they are waiting. Keep your head low and go about your business, don't look up and don't misstep.

 

But I'm not a teenager any more. I went to acting school. I learned about human bahaviour. I know how to detatch and disseminate a performance into various technical elements. The educated drama student in me analyzes and observes. Sunny Shams who plays the boy is a better actor than she expected him to be. The voiceovers by Shane Koyczan are both poetic and sardonically amusing. She identifies. Megan Latham's performance as the Grandmother is heartfelt and subtle. All attempts at detachment dissolved during the notepad conversation beneath the door between the boy and his grandmother. Tears of longing streamed down my face. The compassion and strength of such a simple gesture is too much. But then the bullying begins again. This is understood territory. Here I feel safe. Here I am guarded. The group choreography is detailed and slick. The set pieces are at an angle, as are their projected counterparts, twisted out of shape, creating a distortion of power, an impotent cowering of the soul. The media integration in Stickboy is truly genius. THe outer expression of an inner state. It transforms a potentially flat, loosely structured story into a feast for the imagination. The air is alive and feeling, throbbing with pain and confusion and intent. The libretto seems banal in comparison. That’s the disadvantage to opera sung in English: you can understand what people are saying.

 

A few content details felt jarringly wrong to me. I found the crucifix on the wall of the headmasters office ominous and entirely unexplained. I discovered later that schools in Canada have only recently become secular. Of course Stickboy is the story of a man who is now an adult, but I think contemporary children will feel as shocked and confused by that image as I was. Unless they are attending some sort of religious school, in which case it will have so many other connotations. Also, I would have portrayed the cutting differently, but then I'm not a cutter so I don't feel like I have the right to comment.

 

The part of me that turns 30 this month considers itself a responsible adult. This adult wondered how the children will react when this production tours schools in BC. Will they see themselves? Will they understand or will they scoff with pride and be tough? Will the scared, hopeless ones see the images of violence and cutting as a "How To" guide instead of a warning? Will the bullies see themselves justified in their fear and apathy? Will the bullied feel justified in retaliation? Will the ending feel as unsatisfying and bleak for them as it did for me? I’m too close to tell. And not close enough. On one hand I felt like the content was very "PG", skirting around the edges of the violence and pain I know exists in schools around the world, buffered to spare the feelings of the adults in the audience instead of the kids. I felt it didn't go nearly far enough to be relatable. On the other hand, I hear Shane Koyczan pushed hard during the adaptation to get the piece as dark as it is. And the narrative is loose enough for anyone in the audience to fill in their own details. 

 

I hope the school tour creates dialogue. I don’t believe we, the ones not currently living in that strange social experiment that is the school system, have any power to change how kids treat each other. All we can do is open the door, create a safe space for conversation and hope. Hope that they are brave enough to talk about how they are feeling.

 

When asked why the other children bully the boy at school his Grandmother responds: “They do it because they don't want it done to them.” The subtitle to Stickboy is “There's a bully in all of us.” and having that in the title is important. It's true. It's human nature. We have this deep tribal instinct to kill the “other”, to lash out when we're scared. As kids we don't know why we're scared, we don't think about the consequences of our actions or have the leisure or self-control to sit and think about a better way to deal with conflict; we're riding on hormones and fear and lust and energy and sugar and so much stimulation and the world doesn't make sense yet. We don't understand who we are or why we feel what we feel. All of that comes way later. After the damage has been done. In our 20s or so we look around the wreckage we've been a part of and we see other human beings, perhaps for the first time. Perhaps a dialogue is all our children need. Let's give the bullies and the bullied and the bystanders a chance to be heard. Perhaps then we can all begin to heal.

By Danielle Benzon
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