On November 17th, Sahuaro High School’s theatre class held their first performance of the year. The play was called The Bullying Collection and it was a collection of different stories surrounding bullying. They range from funny scenes that show bullying in a satirical way to deep serious works that bring you to tears.

Act 1 starts with a scene called Frosh in The Pit. It opens with a freshman girl sitting in an area that seniors have claimed as their “territory”, leading to a group of seniors bullying the girl for merely sitting somewhere. The bullying escalates until one of the seniors smacks the girl, at which time a junior walks out to confront the bullies. The junior explains how the whole situation was caught on video. The second scene in Act 1 is titled Reunited and It Feels So Good which follows a man who was bullied in school going to his high school reunion, meeting his old bully, and getting closure after the bully apologizes for what they did when they were younger. In the third scene, titled Grey Area, a girl presents a project on optical illusions. When her teacher posts the project on the school’s Facebook page, it gets a lot of hate, leading to the girl being cyberbullied. Essa Stokan, senior, sees this as her favorite performance that she was a part of because “I was the main character.”

The fourth scene in Act 1 was one of the more sensitive ones. It was titled Helplessness and was about someone who committed suicide and the effect their death had on the people around them such as their parents, their friends, and their bullies. This scene was written by a Sahuaro senior, Apollo Wischhusen. It was one of the most powerful among the performances and it had me in tears by the end of it. The final scene in Act 1, titled Bullies Anonymous, was meant to lighten the mood a bit after the tear-jerker that came before it. In Bullies Anonymous we follow a group of bullies essentially going to a bullying rehab group meant to mimic Alcoholics Anonymous as the name implies.

The first two scenes of Act 2 are on the more serious side much like Helplessness. The first scene, titled I Was There, tells the story of a group of students who survived a school shooting, each of them recounting the event and telling the story about where they were when it happened along with the effect it had on them. At the end of the scene, we also hear the shooter’s perspective and their reasoning for committing such a heinous crime. The next scene was titled Stereotype and in it, the actors talked about the different stereotypes surrounding overweight, underweight, and attractive people. The third scene, titled The Uprising, follows a group of “nerds” as they try to come up with a plan to “overthrow” the popular kids. Valerie Juarez said this was her favorite because, “After such hard scenes to act in, The Uprising gave me that comedic relief I so desperately needed.” The final scene of the performance was called Nerdbullies. It followed a couple of news reporters talking about different types of bullying that aren’t talked about as much such as political bullying and mom bullying.

The theater did an absolutely phenomenal job, everyone was fantastic. I can’t wait to see what they do next.