Singing Out Against Cyber Bullying
CONNECTED, a new Australian musical aimed at teaching kids about the dangers of cyber bullying, is about to tour NSW schools. Writer Craig Christie speaks to Neil Litchfield about the musical.
OMG! LOL! Teenage kids today can’t function without being connected to the internet: chatting with their friends via facebook, instagram, twitter, skype or snapchat and texting or posting selfies via their mobile phones.
Cyber bullying is ‘wilful and repeated harm inflicted through the medium of electronic text’ (Patchin & Hinduja 2006). Research has found that one in five students in Australia are cyber bullied. Students who are bullied suffer from higher rates of depression, anxiety, low self esteem, reduced concentration and helplessness.
Neil Litchfield: What inspired you to write a musical about cyber bullying?
Craig Christie: As a writer you’re always looking for stories that engage you. About five years ago one of my shows was in Singapore. I was in the hotel room reading the paper and there was a whole page article about it. That was the first time it really hit me what an issue it was.
Not very long after thatafterwards the daughter of a friend had some photographs circulated, which caused a lot of trauma for the family. That made it much closer to home. I used those sorts of things to start with, and then more and more stories came up, and I started generating storylines from there.
NL: Tell me about the show.
CC: It’s set in a high school, with four main characters. The story unfolds of a girl who comes into the school from outside. Through no fault of her own, she falls foul of the mean girl of the school, who instigates a campaign against her, and manipulates other people’s situations and stories and makes the new girl’s life a real misery. The other characters are the mean girl’s ex-boyfriend, the popular guy in the school, who is nice and friendly, though a little bit clueless. Then there’s the guy who’s more of a social outcast, who begins a friendship with the new girl, but thanks to the intervention of the mean girl that all goes quite foul.
Part of the story is about how good people, either by accident or design, can do horrible things.
NL: How have you developed the music to be appropriate to the theme and the story?
CC: The style of the music is very Indee pop / rock, which is appropriate to the age group and the characters involved. It’s a very guitar driven, edgy style, which really helps drive the narrative. It’s quite a fast-paced narrative, as befits the culture of younger people.
NL: Was Connected written specifically to tour into schools?
CC: It wasn’t originally. I wrote Connected as a piece of music theatre for the general public. That’s how it was presented when we launched it in London, and then took it to Edinburgh. It stood on its merits as a piece of musical theatre, and got some great reviews.
It’s not written specifically for schools, but what we’re hoping to do is deliver a quality piece of music theatre into the schools so it’s accessing new audiences and giving it the greatest chance of exposure with kids who may not go to a piece like this, because it’s a musical. It’s also a great springboard for conversation and discussion.
NL: Have you had to do a great deal of adaptation to make the show suitable to tour to schools?
CC: There was some adaptation necessary, because originally the language was much tougher, or, I guess, much more accurately reflecting how 16-year-olds talk to each other. We’ve had to take out some of the swearing, and the climax of the show has been adapted to make it more appropriate for younger school groups. But it doesn’t lessen the impact of the situation at all, and the important thing is we still see the emotional impact of the storyline, not just for the girl who is the victim of the cyber-bullying campaign, but for all of the characters, because nobody gets off unscathed.
CONNECTED, presented by Origin On Stage in association with Theatre One Productions is available for school incursion performances during 2015 throughout NSW as well as being available for student/parent performances out of school hours. Following each performance Cyber Safety expert Leonie Smith will conduct a workshop discussion which covers safe and unsafe apps, social media and kids, cyber bullying, adult content filters, safer messaging, essential privacy settings, scams and traps online and smart online behaviour.