Sung Siew Drama Productions: 2005

Bang! Bang! You're dead.
In the eyes of the teenager

Kipland Kinkel was born to normal parents. When he was 4 years old, his family moved to Spain. He found trouble speaking Spanish and encountered difficulties with a school bully. Back home, Kip had hard time learning because of his dyslexic condition. While his sister progressed in school, he was held back a year and felt the disappointment in his parents and himself. He became more isolated when his sister went to college. When he entered middle school, he was of small stature and remained poor in his studies. He possessed no athletic schools so naturally, he was a target for bullies. Slowly, he began to develop a psychological shield to hide inside. He started hanging out with street gangs and had unsupervised access to the internet. The records showed that he found solace in and affinity to extremist lyrics, indicating an identity with violent ideas and concepts.

Kip’s world was becoming much too narrow and introverted. He began to be interested in bombs and guns and other weapons. His parents did not recognize his developing manure and gave in to his demands or wish for weapons. His developing criminal tendencies became manifest when he threw pebbles on passing cars and was arrested. Kip’s mother soon recognized the developing crisis in the family and referred her son to a psychologist who found out that Bill Kinkel (his father) was the missing person in Kip’s life. Kip soon was expressing violent behavior too readily but he underwent treatment for depression and it seemed to have helped a lot.

In high school, Kip got involved in a failed romance with a girl. This episode came at a time when a new phenomenon was sweeping American schools – Shooting. Kip immediately identified himself with it, and was heard to say how he would do the same thing. Things soon came to a violent climax and as they say the rest is history. He shot his parents and went to school and killed two other school kids and wounded 26 others. He’s now in jail serving 111 years.

One afternoon in New York, William Mastrosimone’s eldest son, who was 15 year old then, came home from school. He told William that as he walked into English class that day, waiting for the teacher, a kid had written: “I'M GOING TO KILL EVERYBODY IN THIS CLASS” on the blackboard. The kid who did it was apprehended. The incident occurred after the tragic shootings in Jonesboro, Arkansas, West Paducah, Ky., and Bethel, Alaska. The whole town was turned upside down by this little incident. The next day, William could not get any work done. That night, the famous playwright wrote the first draft of Bang! Bang! You’re Dead! Says Mastrosimone “I wrote it all at once. I wanted to address the kid in the audience who is contemplating violence, so I created a character who, at the start of the play, brags about his killings. I thought that would suck in the kid contemplating it.” It was such a coincidence that the infamous Thurston shooting incidents happened a few days after “Bang! Bang! You’re Dead!” was finished. Mr. Mastrosimone then donated his play to Thurston High and volunteered his services in getting it staged. Early in 1999, a cast of 13 Thurston students who had lived through the actual shooting premiered “Bang! Bang! You're Dead!” at a drama festival in Bend, Oregon. Since then, Mr. Mastrosimone has been overwhelmed with e-mail provoked by his play's far-flung productions — everything from questions about how to remove ketchup “bloodstains” from an actor's shirt to chilling exchanges with several students mulling their own acts of violence. Some confided that they had hit lists, and that they wanted to kill themselves, taking others with them. Says Mastrosimone : "They wrote that they had nobody else to talk to. They told me that they saw my play and it changed their minds. So, I know that we saved lives. But I knew this wasn't over, that we had scratched only the surface of a problem that was about kids planning to commit mass murder because they wanted to kill themselves.” Since “Bang! Bang! You’re Dead!” was premiered, it has been performed by schools all over the US and by thousands of schools globally.

Sung Siew Secondary School, Sandakan Sabah is no exception. In preparation for the divisional level drama competition, my school’s drama team adapted this play for a 20-minute production. We managed to win through to the national level which was held in Johor last August. We went upstage with only one goal in mind : To get the message out. In the end, tragedy lost to comedy but seeing the way the audience reacted, hearing the sniffles and seeing the way how many members of the audience wiped their eyes, it was truly rewarding. We were also encouraged by the number of teachers and students who came to tell us how it touched their hearts. This play is relevant to the situation we are facing with today’s schools. Even if we turn our whole school into security guard stations, and spot-check the contents of every backpack in school, what is in a person’s heart cannot be seen by those who are looking from the outside. “Bang! Bang! You’re Dead!” is a play that can be used as a powerful tool for prevention and intervention and to heighten our consciousness so that we may see tragedy before it happens.

After performing this drama, our aim in getting the message across was achieved. Even so, thoughts and questions kept creeping into my mind. What if this incident really happens in our school? What if I become a victim of the incident? Will I be taking psychotherapy sessions now? Will I suffer the incident for the rest of my life? Or will I be spared of the trauma and agony of the incident and be one of the dead? What if the perpetrator is my friend? Will I be able to deal with it? Will I be able to live a normal life after all that? I will ask why. Why would he do it? Why would he endanger lives of so many people? Why would he cause so much pain?

Fortunately for us, shooting incidents have not occurred in Malaysia before. Although this is so, we constantly hear fights, bullying, etcetera happening in our schools, sometimes resulting in death. Why do these happen? Is it possible that the perpetrator, like Kip, lacked love respect and discipline? Maybe he had sounded a number of alarms and signs but did those around him hear it? Even so, could they have done anything to prevent it? We may be very fortunate to live in a peaceful and harmonious community with a loving family to support us and with many promises in school and life, but some kids may not be so lucky. These kids usually become troubled kids. Their every movement, action and behavior is reflecting to their situation. These people usually seek attention and yearn for respect. We are looking at victims of the popular, the “IN” crowd. They are usually regarded as week and weird, to be laughed at, and not to be associated with. Teenagers are emotionally developing people and to be labeled and taunted like this often leads to emotional problems ad feelings of low esteem. Some may choose the suicide path, some may bully others in return, and others may choose to react violently against the perpetrators, Why is that we have all these problems in our schools and the teachers are rarely doing anything about it? By the lack of action against school bullies, we are actually asking for a Kip Kinkel incident to happen. I feel that the parents and teachers need to do more to curtail school bullies and I fear that a Kip Kinkel’s incident can happen in our school…..

By : Tricia Chung Ning Li
3B 2006

“Bang! Bang! You’re dead” is a play that was written by the famous playwright William Mastrosimone. The play is available on the internet ( www.bangbangyouredead.com ) for free. This play was our last year’s school drama production and the team had won with this play through Divisional level, State Level and Zone level. They represented Zone ‘D’ to Johor Bharu for the National Level and won the first runner up. The team’s mission was to bring the message of school violence to the audience, to open eyes, to reach out and make a different. Teenagers are just children after all. They need guides and attentions. Although this play may not be the solution, but it was worth staged. The 2005’s drama team wants to thank all, especially parents, teachers, friends and individuals that had supported, contributed and sponsored throughout the production on this play. With your continuous supports, we had achieved to national level and brought the message to nationwide. Thank you.

Drama Teacher ~ Ms. L atifah Yusof Embun

In order to support the theme of the play, as well in raising funds for our trips and accommodations for the competitions, we had ran fundraising activities, such as buttons sale (sponsored and sent all the way from USA by Ms. Angelique) and movie show of 'Bang! Bang! You're dead.' We wanted to take this opportunity to thank all our sponsors that had helped us to go through the productions and competitions, financially, physically and spiritually. They are :~

Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth Chung
Mr. Daniel
Ms. Angelique B.
Diverse Bookstore Sdn. Bhd.
Members of the Golf Club
Mr. Patrick Lim
Teachers & students

We also had few parties to celebrate! :-) We had our first BBQ party at Sandakah Curry House and enjoyed our ice cream at 7 Heavens. We also had another party before the school term ended at Ms. Lat's place :-) Then our final meeting was a farewell party for Nurul Ainina as she was transfered to Penang, followed her parents back.