NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR OF CARRIE: THE MUSICAL
Bullying. The act of intentionally treating another cruelly for no offense of their own, other than a perceived difference or, especially, a weakness in the victim.
It can be physical, emotional, mental and persecutory. It can be in person or, increasingly, in the online social media space. It can be one person picking on another, or it can be a crowd of people deciding someone is beneath them.
It can be a one-time event, or, more often, a pattern over months or even years. And its impact can be devastating.
Much attention has been given to school bullying, but bullying behavior can occur anywhere there are people—workplaces, universities, churches, families, even theaters—anywhere power struggles crop up.
Usually, the objects of bullying feel powerless to stop the behavior. They may even ask for help—and sometimes this works. But sometimes it does not. And people learn to be helpless. And learned helplessness leads to depression, social withdrawal, substance abuse and intense anger.
If we haven’t experienced it ourselves, we have certainly watched as others have been treated poorly.
And if we are honest, many of us could point to episodes where we were less than perfectly kind to another person.
Stephen King watched two young women in his high school get bullied again and again. Later, when asked to write a story from “a girl’s perspective,” he thought of them and, encouraged by his wife, built parts of their story into his first novel, Carrie.
He imagined a situation where a young person was persecuted at school in the most horrible of ways—not only insulted, but belittled and dehumanized on a daily basis. At home, she faced a different form of dysfunction—a mother who was living through her own trauma, frequently releasing it on her daughter in a torrent of abuse. There was love, but it was twisted and confused, utterly unpredictable.
And then he imagined that this girl was gifted with incredible, fantastical power.
This is the fantasy of the bullied—that you can wave your hand and it all goes away. Or you can make them hurt like they hurt you. Mr. King followed this idea to its logical, deadly conclusion—a true horror tragedy—where much like Sweeney Todd, Madam Rose, Medea and other towering figures of theater, the mistreated end up destroying something they love in their efforts to get justice for themselves.
What do we learn, then, from this story? I think Sue’s character sums it up best when she says, simply, “What does it cost to be kind?”
We as a company have been living with that question for the last two months. These are some of the most talented, dedicated and, yes, kind people you will meet. We are honored you have come to see our work. We hope we have moved you to consider this question along with us and as a community, find solutions so that the idea that “every class has to have a Carrie” is something we can think of as a relic of a less enlightened time.
Christopher Okiishi is pleased to return to TCR after having the pleasure of directing Mamma Mia! and Rock of Ages. He thanks the cast, creative team, and TCR for their unwavering support and genius-level creativity. During the day, he is a Child, Adolescent and Adult Psychiatrist at Meadowlark Psychiatric Services in North Liberty and Iowa City. He and his husband, fellow TCR veteran Patrick Du Laney, also run Crooked Path Theatre, a company dedicated to “Illuminating, Astonishing, and Rigorous” theater. He dedicates this production to his parents who wisely didn’t let him watch the movie in 1976 and showered him with countless other acts of love.
Love to PJD and Detroit.