By Walt Dulaney

For the first four days of Spring Break 2007, thirty T-Shirt Theatre performers resisted the siren call of beach and bed to shuffle out to 5 hour rehearsals of their student-written and staff-sculpted show about folks who eclipse the joy of others.

Please let the question mark title register, for Bully? is meant to provoke self-assessment rather than finger-pointing. As a character says, "Every time you point a finger at some-one else - three of your fingers point back home."

Early on Bully? plays a guessing game with a line-up of suspects. Turns out it's not the three menacing faces but a lad in a T-Shirt Theatre shirt and granny in her walker who quickly over-step the bounds of fair behavior.
Q. So who's a bully?
A. "… a 2-year-old of any age, gender, size, sexual orientation or ethnicity."

How-zat? Quoting family psychologist John Rosemond: "Toddlers are by nature violent, deceitful, destructive, rebellious, and prone to sociopathic rages if they do not get their own way." When that definition is challenged, a belligerent baby and a U.S. presi-dent duet a 1905 hit: "There's no world-ly pleasure, my self I de-ny,
There's no one to ask me the where-fore or why,
I eat when I'm hun-gry, and drink when I'm dry -
For I want what I want when I want it!
I want what I want when I want it!"

Oops, are we in trouble for lambasting a Pres? No, for the statute of limitations ran out on Teddy Roosevelt who fomented the revolution that broke-off the province of Panama from Colombia, and allowed the construction of TR's canal as Congress fumed and the nation knowingly hummed "I want what I want when I want it."

As recent campus violence interrupted education at Farrington HS, we widened Bully? focus to spotlight "the not-so-innocent Bystander." Whenever students run to witness a campus fight, they make it less-likely combatants will reconcile but play to a growing crowd to save face. Fights are theatrical, but it's side-line bullying that really undercuts the education of many. As senior Mark Cabico reflects: "We all know students who were made to feel so afraid on campus - so unwelcome - that they stopped coming to school." Tati Ramirez responds: "We can't afford that. Take it from an almost-grad, without a high school diploma the future is dark - and it's our tax dollars that support drop-outs."

The answer is the show's hardest sell, to nudge a new name for despised tattle-tales. "In sports you need the guy with the whistle, to insure everyone plays by the rules. So let's update our kindergarten vocabulary, and salute the guardians who blow the whistle when someone's rights are threatened."

The show's evolving, but here's calendar heads-up. Please be with us on Friday, April 27 at 7:30 pm or Sunday, April 29 at 4:30 pm to see how Bully? plays out. Admission is a welcoming smile, but post-show donations are invited. The location? Thought you'd never ask … Farrington HS, 1564 North King Street, in Kalihi, USA.