Are There Bullies At Your School?

Here's a true story. When my daughter was a freshman in high school, she hated to walk to school because one girl taunted her every morning. The daily bullying made for a difficult year.

After my daughter graduated from college she mentioned that she recently found out what happened to that bully. That girl, at the age of twenty-two, had two children, from two different fathers, both of whom were in jail.

I think there are two lessons here. One is bullies often have miserable lives, and the other is those who are bullied find it really, really unpleasant. Reliable studies show both of these things to be true.

So if your school has bullies, they're making some kids truly unhappy and at the same time practically assuring a bad future for themselves. As teachers, we don't want either of these things to happen.

What can we do? There's a bunch of anti-bullying programs available, and some of them are probably somewhat effective. And then there is "Bullies Anonymous," our most recent musical, which is guaranteed to have catchy melodies that get stuck in your head and dumb jokes from the fertile mind of lyricist John Heath.

Will "Bullies Anonymous" solve your schools bullying problem? It's too new to really know. But after 80,000 productions of Bad Wolf Press plays over the last thirteen years, an awful lot of teachers seem to trust us.

You can read the first third of "Bullies Anonymous" and listen to sample songs from it here:
http://www.badwolfpress.com/bullies.htm (Copy and paste into your browser if the link doesn't work for you.

And you can see the musicians and singers who performed on the recording here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22402091@N03/sets/72157603780804596/detail/

Let me know if you have any questions.
Best wishes,
Ron

Bullies Anonymous

If anyone reading this liked our play "Character Matters" then you owe it to your self to check out the brand new "Bullies Anonymous."

This wasn't easy to write---how in the world are we supposed to talk about bullies and not be preachy or boring? But I think we've done pretty darn well. The first third of the script will be posted at our website in a couple of days, and there are already four sample songs for you to inspect.

I know you want to know about the whole play, but as the music guy, I have to tell you about the songs. We decided to go all out for this show, so we wound up hiring six different singers and players to bring as much variety as possible. I'll have photos of the players in the studio soon, but for now let me tell you about them and let you do some listening.

We were very lucky to get Dana Shaw again. This singer actress has moved to New York City, which isn't convenient to southern California where I am. But she came back to visit her family for Christmas and we managed to record her during her stay. Here she is with a song about the girl who refused to be pushed around by bullies.
http://www.badwolfpress.com/becky.mp3

Brenda Tzipori has sung on the last 26 Bad Wolf shows, so most of you have probably heard her voice. I really appreciate how she finds a way of acting out every song she records. I really like how on the song about the bullyometer she sounds so pompous at the start and then relaxes as the song picks up tempo. (John and Mike also took part.) http://www.badwolfpress.com/complete_bullyometer.mp3

Tanya Wright returns for her second recording and she managed to sing after hosting a million out-of-town guests for Christmas (and suffering through a car crash just a few days before the holiday.) Here she is singing lead (and you'll also hear Mike, Sam and John) http://www.badwolfpress.com/dont_step_in_BG_vocals.mp3

Mike Fishell played multiple electric guitar on three songs and Dobro on another. Mike is another Bad Wolf veteran, as well as a sixth grade teacher in Oxnard, CA.

Sam Coleman played drums and percussion on a couple of songs, which is the first time I've ever been able to record a drummer for any of the shows. His hand-drumming on "Don't Step In" really woke the song up.

John Robinson played trombones on "Don't Step In" and "The Bullyometer." He arrived at the studio with three different trombones, and experimented with each until he found the right instrument for the songs.

I'll leave these mp3 files up through January, and I'll soon tell you more about the play itself.