Bang You Re Dead: Play Analysis

Freshman year I auditioned for my school's traveling drama group, and made the cast for a few plays. One of these plays is called “Bang Bang You’re Dead”, and is about Josh- a kid with undiagnosed schizophrenia that combined with his parents inattention leads to him shooting up his school, killing 5 people. I’ve now participated in this play for three years and hopefully a fourth, should I get in, and through the years I’ve matured and gotten more understanding of topics such as school violence and mental illness. My first year I mostly just watched, watched the upperclassmen talk, watched their scenes and listened to stories about their classes and people I didn't know. I rarely talked and felt nervous when I did. It wasn't that the upperclassmen
were mean or anything like that. I looked up to them so I didn't want to have them think bad of me if I messed up, even though I know now that they couldn't care less. I didn't realize the reason I felt this way was because of anxiety not because of others. I was sort of the class pet of the play, making sure I knew every line I needed to the exact day they needed it and I would constantly go over the lines in my head to make sure I remembered. Slowly I started talking more even though it still gave me an uneasy feeling, and eventually junior year, when I started going to therapy again, I was able to improve even more and eventually was able to share during Bang Bang my experience with anxiety, as well as embrace the reasons I did bang bang in the first place. To instill the belief that although mental illness is not a positive thing, it is normal and nothing to be ashamed of and most of all there’s treatment and everyone deserves help.
Not all stories have to end like Josh's did, in tragedy. A person can get treatment, and if Josh knew this, things would have been different. Last year during the talk back one of the seniors shared his experience with depression and made us all comfortable explaining too. Sharing my experience with therapy and anxiety while staring at a bunch of eighth graders was like facing off with a someone because I still feel the stigma of mental illness being something to be embarrassed about, but it was necessary. Even if my story and the play only helped one kid, it was worth it. My senior year I hope to make the little freshman who get in, along with everyone else, comfortable to speak and happy to be in the program. I don't want any kids to feel embarrassed like so many do for not being completely “normal” because mental illness affects so many people and it needs to be treated as a disease, not a bad day and not “crazy people”, they are real people with real sickness but there is real help.