PLAY DRAMATIZES THE REAL EFFECTS OF VIOLENCE

Tim Thompson, Perryville High School drama teacher

"Why did you kill me?" the deceased Catherine Moore asked Josh Erzfeld in the play, "Bang, Bang, You're Dead!"

PERRYVILLE -- "Paducah, Jonesboro, Springfield," the cast of the play "Bang Bang You're Dead" repeat over and over, a mantra of infamous scenes of school violence.

Josh, the protagonist, has killed his parents and five of his high school classmates. Some he knew, some he didn't. Surrounding him as ghostly presences dressed in black, they want to know why.

"You were in the wrong place at the wrong time," he quips at first.

But through the course of "Bang Bang You're Dead," the teen-agers who have lost their lives force Josh to look point blank at the consequences of allowing his violent fantasies to become real.

"Bang Bang You're Dead," a Perryville High School production drama currently touring the state, is a 40-minute whiff of ammonia. The play is powerful because the words come from teen-agers we know from terrible experience could become the victims of violence as easily as anyone these days. Young, innocent and dead, they list all they miss about being alive, from chocolate chip cookies to kisses to having children themselves. Slowly Josh begins to understand the unalterable finality of all he's done to them, their families and friends and, he sees, to himself.

"All the nevers he will never experience," someone in the play says.

No prop guns are used in the play, only fingers pointed the way children do when they're pretending. The play contends that pretending to shoot someone, whether in a fantasy, a video game or a movie, is taking the first step toward bringing the act into reality.

Playwright William Mastrosimone has said he wrote "Bang Bang You're Dead" for the killer in the audience, the one fantasizing about getting back at people he thinks have wronged him. The hope is for that kid to experience a catharsis by watching.

Best known for the play and movie "Extremities," Mastrosimone assembles a lineup of multiple culprits in this tragic scenario: Violent video games and movies, a fascination with guns, the indoctrination of youths into the culture of hunting, cries for help that are not listened to.

But in the end, "Bang Bang You're Dead" is not a play about guns, Perryville High School drama teacher Tim Thompson, a Southeast graduate, says.

"It really isn't about guns. It's about the mentality of one young man who takes a personal fantasy to the limit."

In the play, Josh is angry at his parents for taking away his rifle and at his ex-girlfriend for dumping him, and he feels mocked by his classmates. Perryville High School student Josh Erzfeld, who plays Josh, is the only member of the cast who says he can identify with Josh the character's feelings.

Others, like senior Kris Kueker, say they know students Josh could have been based on. "Everybody gets violent sometimes," he says, "and everybody has friends who get violent."

Several cast members say being in the play has made them more careful about the things they say to fellow students. "I'm less quick to judge somebody for what they wear or something," Kueker says.

Said Aimee Newcom, "It makes you realize what you do and say does have an effect on people."

Perryville High School has had no incidents of violence. "The other schools never had incidents of things either," Thompson says. "You have to address the problem before it happens."

Mastrosimone lives in a town near Springfield, Ore., where a 15-year-old high school student killed his parents and two fellow students while wounding many others in 1998. A week after the killings, the playwright's son came home from junior high school saying someone wrote "I'm going to kill everyone in this class. And the teacher, too," on a blackboard.

Mastrosimone spent that night roughing out "Bang Bang You're Dead." When he offered the script to the drama teacher at Thurston High School, where the killings occurred, many people were upset at first. They thought he was trying to capitalize on the killings.

But Mastrosimone is getting no royalties for "Bang Bang You're Dead." He has put the script on the Internet. Anyone can download it and anyone can mount a production as long as they agree not to charge admission. Theaters that produce the play can't even sell refreshments. Many thousands of people have downloaded "Bang Bang You're Dead."

"I didn't know it would be forever," Josh says at the end of the play. "I thought it was "bang bang you're dead" again. I thought I could just hit the reset button and start over. Why can't I have another chance? When I killed you I killed all my possibilities, too. I'll never have anything to look forward to. Never."