The Theatre for Young Audiences series at the Perot Theater will soon tackle a tough subject for today's youth: bullying.
The play "Out of Bounds" will be presented at both 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Tuesday. Both showings are geared toward local school groups (Grades 5 through 8), but tickets for the general public will also be available for the 12:30 p.m. rendition.
The play tells what happens when a teen girl posts an inappropriate photo of herself online, for which she's bullied by her peers. The play blends this fictional plot with true stories told by the actors on stage.
"It is a really interesting concept. They did a lot of research before they started writing the show," said Laila Al-Dubais, ArtsSmart program assistant and Theatre for Young Audiences coordinator at the Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council, about show creators Hancher, a multidisciplinary arts presenter at the University of Iowa, and Working Group Theatre in Iowa City.
"They talked to the teachers, parents, students," Al-Dubais said. Workshops helped guide how the show took shape.
Play characters, including three teen girls and a teacher, dramatize some of the social issues that arise when a new girl comes to school. One girl's past helps catalyze the situation and relationships become threatened.
"It really focuses on cyberbullying," said Al-Dubais, noting TRAHC sees the topic as timely in an age when the world is becoming digitized.
"Especially in today's age when everything is kind of going to online everything: forms, filling out applications. We want students to be aware that there is someone on the receiving end of that, that anything you post is not completely private," Al-Dubais explained.
They don't want to scare youth away from making social media connections, but they urge them to be more conscious of what they put out there for the world to see, she said. She thinks parents with middle school kids or those without can both learn something from this play, perhaps widen their understanding of what bullying is today.
And it's also a good reminder that what you post will make its way around. Also, cyberbullying is something even adults do.
"There's probably minimum of one person that will see anything that you post, whether they hit the 'like' button or not," Al-Dubais said.
TRAHC provides study guides to teachers for this program, which includes an activity to finish a scene. "It gives the teachers four or five lines from the play," Al-Dubais said. Teachers get students to finish out a scene and dramatize how problems may be resolved.
"What would you say in this situation?" Al-Dubais said. This method gets students participating in the issue, realizing how hurtful the bullying can be, she believes.
(Admission: $7 for general admission, $5 per person for ArtsSmart districts/campuses. To make a reservation, call Laila Al-Dubais at 903-792-8681. More info: TRAHC.org.)