Theatre is conflict at its heart. Drama is about power and want and the need to feel in control.

So theatre is a near-perfect medium to address the increasingly prevalent and ever-more complex social struggle that is Cyberbullying.

It’s everywhere these days because, like Drama, Cyberbullying is all Tragedy. Stories of pre-teens, teens, and college students killing themselves because of relentless bullying are appearing everywhere, and educators, administrators, and legislators are all taking action.

And the element of the Relentless is what makes Cyberbullying so dangerous and so difficult a problem to “solve.”

It is safe to say that, on some level on a very long vertical continuum, we have all been bullied, either in school, at home, or in the workplace. As children, we were told it would pass and for most of us whose homes were a safe haven from such things as name-calling, threats, and ridicule, it did. We perhaps even learned and were strengthened by our experiences with bullies.

But Cyberbullying doesn’t end when a student goes home, or out of town, or anywhere else. It resides in the cell phone, the social networking of the Internet, and in the videos posted on places like YouTube. Bullies have unprecedented reach and a very broad audience that is all too willing to feed on what the bully is giving them.

In our workshops, which started for elementary school students in 2003 and have since been expanded for older students and adults in almost any social setting imaginable, we have seen the trends in Cyberbullying develop in real time. The stories have changed. Gotten harder to believe; harder to address. The scenarios we play out as a means to discussion and the search for understanding and solutions have gotten increasingly more Dramatic.

It is encouraging to see lawmakers taking steps to better protect those that are bullied. This is even more important than punishing the bullies, who represent the gap between our Technological and Moral advancement as a society.

Cell phones, digital recording devices, and the Internet are here to stay and will only grow more ubiquitous over time, reaching younger users and those in rural areas who are not yet weaving them into the fabric of their lives. No doubt bullies will find more hurtful and horrific ways to use these devices to get the power and sense of control they engage in this behavior for in the first place.

Those in the public eye should do more to set an example. Tweets and blogs trashing their competitors and colleagues fill the social networking sites, and they are often presented as humorous. Celebrities engaging in bullying behavior are rewarded with hundreds of thousands of faithful followers and millions of dollars. No need to name names—the list is far too long.

Social justice theatre can make a difference, fostering understanding and opening dialogue. We need to find new ways to turn these mediums of negative communication back around on themselves and work to re-capture their great potential.

In theatre we seek to “raise the stakes.” When it comes to Cyberbullying, and the lives of the young people it destroys, the stakes are higher than any of us could ever have imagined.

For the past 12 years, I have been devising and refining a mechanism for making our plays as structurally sound and as realistic as possible for the middle and high school audience. The issues we explore—drug and alcohol abuse, racism and sexual intolerance, teen pregnancy, violence, and now teen suicide—are difficult; few people feel comfortable talking about root causes (otherwise known as “who’s to blame”) and fewer still are willing to talk about their own experiences.

In 1998, when I was asked to write the scenes for a musical called “The Think it Thru Revue,” I knew that as a 29-year-old male I was not equipped with the depth of insight needed to write a truly realistic play about teen sex. The pressures of the kids I was working with were in many ways the same—peer pressure is peer pressure through the ages, for the most part—yet I knew that burgeoning technologies and more permissiveness and opportunity were also making the pressures greater than what I had experienced.

At the time, Arizona, where I was living and working, led the nation in teen pregnancy, so the stakes were high. The project was well funded and plenty of stakeholders were waiting to see what we were going to do.

The first thing I did—and this has become an essential part of our process—was to talk to the young actors who would be in the Company we were forming for the project. There was a sufficient level of trust to create an honest and open dialogue about the issues surrounding teen sex. From there, I created some scenarios based on what they were saying before holding a workshop where we had the kids play out the scenes. I recorded them that first time, a practice I have since abandoned.

I want things to be as real as possible without crossing any dangerous lines and even the best actor cannot be natural if they know the camera’s rolling.

I then did research—I had plenty of statistics at my disposal from funding agencies, sponsors, and other stakeholders. The Abstinence vs. Contraceptive debate was just beginning to rage and as I formulated the characters and plot of the play, I found myself right in the middle of it. We lost out on a $10,000 grant because my gut was telling me that to honor our Company members and those they would be performing for, we couldn’t take a solely Abstinence stance. Abstinence was the choice of one of the couples in the story, but the other two couples represented the personal costs of teen pregnancy and HIV/AIDS.

We won several regional and national awards with “Think it Thru Revue” and the play toured Arizona and had performances in several other states for two and a half years. When we started New Mystics Theatre Company in NJ in 2005, I rewrote the script to be a non-musical under the title “Thinkin’ it Over.” It has been touring ever since, with ongoing edits based on feedback from Company members, requests from hiring organizations, and the rapidly changing times.

The past five years working with my co-directors and the talented performers of New Mystics North and South have allowed me to continually refine our methods of creating new works using statistical and methods-based research, discussion sessions with Company members, and improvisation. Our play “7 Reasons to Say No,” about drug and alcohol addiction, was created in the rehearsal space during many hours of rigorous improvising of scenarios where the Company members’ training in realistic portrayal and use of “impediments” (such as being high or drunk) was pushed to the absolute limits.

Just last week I worked with 15 members of New Mystics North and Company Director Ralph Colombino on generating material and ideas for our forthcoming show on teen suicide, “No One Hears Unless You Scream.” The scenarios we worked through were based primarily on a discussion moderated by our staff with Company members last November. Tears were shed and skills again pushed to the limit. No one has to remind any of us how serious this is. Eight teen suicides in a single New Jersey county in the past two and half years is reminder enough. Every person in that room that day has been touched by suicide at least once in their lives, if not more.

As Resident Playwright, it is my name that appears after the title, as I apply two decades of study, theory, and practice into writing the most honest, structurally sound, and compelling plays of which I am capable, but none of my skill and dedication to the end product would succeed without the honesty, trust, and talent of our Company members.

Heartfelt responses from our target audience lets us know we are on the right track.

“The Arts as a Component of City Revitalization”

I’ve been thinking a lot the past year and a half about how to take the philosophy and talents of New Mystics and apply them better to the “New Economy” and the revitalization of cities that have lost their edge.

Tonya and I have been truly blessed to have made our home in Fairmont, WV, a once-great city that built itself from a frontier community centered around Prickett’s Fort to a coal power before slowly but surely sinking into disrepair and forgotten-ness in the later half of the twentieth century.

But things are changing in Fairmont—we had our first Create Marion meeting last Friday in the soon-to-be completed and opened New Mystics Center for Arts and Education. As 30 community leaders examined the pillars of the “New Economy”: “Quality of Place,” “Diversity,” “Talent and Education,” and “Technology” we became more convinced than ever that Fairmont, and Marion County, of which she is such a major part, is poised to combine the Frontier Spirit with the latest innovations of the 21st-century to become a force once again to be reckoned with. With a strong complement of social, economic, and educational entrepreneurs all working together for the betterment of our city and ourselves, we cannot fail.

New Mystics Arts plans to play a major role in the process. We are joining with ever more local and regional artists and arts organizations to create a critical mass of Synergy and Optimism in north central West Virginia that will link with our New Jersey theatre company to slowly but surely give us a mid-Atlantic presence that will celebrate the best of what the Arts and Artists can offer the world—a voice for all where social justice and diversity are not just catch phrases but a way of life.

Following in the footsteps of Augusto Boal, Bertold Brecht, The Living Theatre and others in the theatre that believe that we have a larger role to play as artists than Entertainment and Escape (although those are important functions as well) New Mystics Arts will continue to produce thought-provoking and dialogue-opening plays and workshops and train actors, teachers, and artists of all ages to use their Vision, Voice and Passion to revitalize their communities and their world.