(Stage is set up with all four people very close together. The chairs should be almost overlapping. Have two in front and two in back, but not directly behind if you know what I mean. As each person says their part they can change positions, but at any given time all four should be in a different position, ie, one standing, one sitting, one slouching, etc.)
Person 1: It wasn’t supposed to end up like this. I mean, I didn’t really mean for this to happen. In fact, if you really look at the situation you’ll see that it wasn’t my fault at all. I wasn’t even involved. There is this guy at my school. Kind of a weird guy. Doesn’t quite fit in, if you know what I mean. He’s the kind of guy that keeps to himself and does his own thing. I never bothered him. I never really thought all that much about him. He was just there. And I was doing my own thing.
Person 1 and 2: It wasn’t really my fault at all.
Person 2: It wasn’t my idea. I just went along with it because my friends were. They thought that it would be funny to mess with this one guy at school. They just thought that if they broke into his locker and stole his phone we could all get a good laugh out of it. It wasn’t a big deal at all. I didn’t really even do anything,
Narrators freeze and on the other part of the stage. There are four of them in front of a locker.
Bully 1: Quick hurry.
Bully 2: Come on, will you.
Bully 3: I am going as fast as I can.
Bully 4: Look we got it.
Bully 1: Hmm don’t look now but guess who is here.
Victim: What are doing?
Bully 2: Stealing your phone. What are you going to do about it?
Bully 3: (pushes the victim to the ground).
Bully 4: We are taking your phone and you are not to stay anything.
Freeze for a moment and walk off stage quietly.
Person 3: I don’t know why people pick on me. I‘m really not all that different. I just like to keep to myself. I don’t feel like talking to a lot of people. I guess I’m kind of distracted when I’m at school. I have a lot of stuff going on at home, you know? And so I think about it a lot. Its hard to focus on everyone having fun when I’ve got so much stress at home. I’m not trying to be anti-social or anything, I just have a lot on my mind.
Narrators freeze and on the other part of the stage.
Father is sleeping in the corner with a bottle. Victim is watching telly.
Mother comes into the room.
Mother: Look at the state of him. How long has he been like that?
Victim: Since I got home from school.
Mother: Wake up you silly fool.
Father: (wakes and grunts) Shut you stupid cow.
They have a fight father goes to hit mother then everyone freezes.
Person 4: I really hate my school, though. People there are just so juvenile and unfocused. It really brings me down. I have a hard time focusing there and I don’t want to make trouble for myself.
Victim: Do you want to go into town after school?I don’t want to go home.
Person 4: No offence I’d like to but I don’t think I should be seen with you.
Victim: Why not?
Person 4: Because they might start on me then and I really don’t want that.
Person 4: They just kept picking on him. Every day there was something new. New signs on his locker, new nicknames for him. They just never let up. I didn’t think that it was my place to say anything. I mean, I wasn’t involved. I don’t even know him that well.
Person 3: I just need someone to listen to me. I don’t want them to fix my problems or even tell me what to do, I just want someone to listen. Someone to help me sort through everything that is in my head so that I don’t have to carry it all alone. It’s hard to be so alone all of the time.
Person 2: So we put stuff in his locker, right? Like a dead mouse. And he didn’t do anything about it. He doesn’t get mad, doesn’t fight back, it’s as if he doesn’t even notice that we did anything. Well, that is it get ‘all of the lads really mad because they wanted to get at least some kind of rise out of this kid. So they devise even crazier stuff to get at him. I didn’t really think it was a good idea. I mean, this kid never did anything to any of us. But you can’t just say something like that to your friends. I mean, they’d think I was afraid or something, and I didn’t want that to happen. So I just let it go.
Narrators freeze on the other side of the stage.
Victim opens his locker sighs and throws the mouse in the bin and walks off.
Bully 1: What is his problem?
Bully2: Dunno.
Bully 3: We just have to think of something better.
Bully 4: Like what?
Person 1: I figured that a teacher would step in or something. If it got too bad someone would do something. And so I didn’t need to worry about it. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, so I should just stay out of it. Besides, these guys wouldn’t do anything too bad, right? I mean, they would stop before it got out of hand. It always stops before it gets out of hand.
Person 4: They are so out of hand at my school. Everyone swears all the time, and all anyone can talk about is getting drunk. I don’t do any of that stuff, of course. I. They have no excuse to be acting the way that they do.
Person 3: They just kept at me. I tried to ignore them, but they just kept on going. It was like the more that I ignored them the more they decided to pick on me.
Victim: Why won’t you just leave me alone? I just want to be left alone?
Bully 2: Oh, come on. You’re such a stupid little boy, why won’t you fight like a man.
Bully 3: I don’t want to fight you.
Bully 1: Why, are you scared?
(Back to talking to the audience. Person 3 should be sitting down now with their back to the audience, head down.)
Persons 1 and 2: No one was supposed to get hurt.
Person 1: This wasn’t supposed to happen. Someone was supposed to stop it. There is no way that this should have happened here. A teacher should have stopped this.
Person 4: I knew that something like this would happen. I should have helped him but I didn’t I was too concerned with not been bullied myself.
Person 1: My excuse is that someone else was going to stop all of this.
Person 2: My excuse is that it was only a laugh nobody was meant to get hurt.
Person 4: My excuse is that I had to look after myself.
Persons 1,2, and 4: My excuse is ……………………………………….
(As this last line is said Person 3 gets up and walks off stage, everyone else freezes.)
