APRIL 16, 2009 ISSUE
Teen Actor’s Guild Presents Play About Teen Suicide
The Blowing Rock Stage Company Teen Actor’s Guild is currently presenting the play Sleepwalk, by William Mastrosimone, to area schools and youth organizations. The play deals with the consequences of teen suicide.
The guild has already performed the play for the Rainbow Center in Wilkes County and has scheduled performances at Watauga High School, Blowing Rock Elementary, Johnson County High School and Western Youth Network.
According to the playwright, Sleepwalk is a drama inside the mind of Dillon, the protagonist and stand-in for the troubled teen who becomes captive to his or her own dark fantasies. In the course of his dream, Dillon meets personified aspects of his own psyche—some helpful, some hurtful—but by the end of the dream, Dillon vies with these forces to be the master of his own life. What remains in the aftermath is a person, like everyone else, with a tally sheet of dreams and disappointments, trying to measure up in the world. Sleepwalk aims to debunk, de-mystify and de-romanticize suicide, the play’s description explains.
Kim Cozort Kay, education director for the Blowing Rock Stage Company, said the guild decided to do this play.
“Because they’re my advanced group, I let them have a little bit more voice about the projects that they’re doing,” Kay said. One of the purposes of the guild is to reach out to their peers through theatre, she said.
Kay said that while the guild was in rehearsal for the play, a teen suicide occurred at Watauga High School.
“They’re taking their task very seriously,” she said. “They know what an impact it could have.”
After each performance, the cast will hold a talk-back session with the audience to discuss the issues in the play. Already, the guild’s performance has inspired one girl to speak out about trying to taker her own life, Kay said.
“That was our first performance,” she said. “It was very revealing for them.”
About a month ahead of each performance, Kay sends a study guide to counselors so they can begin discussing the topic with their students. A counselor will also come to speak to the cast.
The cast of Sleepwalk features Lyle Sterne as Dillon, Chandler Walpole as Amydala, Kaitlin Maria Felts as May Flowers, Morgan Story as the Conscience/Inner Child, Jonathan Faulks as the Thought Police and Sarah Brown as the Rock Star.
Kay said that one more slot is available for organizations interested in a production of the play. For more information, call 828-295-9168.
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