Ellington Students Tackle Bullying, Suicide in Original Play

Kady Joy is a well-liked, well-respected senior at Ellington High School. This could be why it’s so difficult for the cast of the original play “Where the Sun is Silent” to torment, bully and physically abuse her.

Joy plays the lead role of Phoebe, a character modeled after the tragic young woman from western Massachusetts who committed suicide after relentless taunts from some of her excrutiantely mean high school peers, in the play written by EHS English and drama teacher Bill Prenetta.

Cassi Flint, 16, an Ellington High junior, describes Joy as a good friend who would never do anything to hurt anyone, but one of the most commonly used words in the play is “slut,” and it's not easy to throw that word at her friend.

“There's a lot of hugging afterward and saying we love each other,” Flint said recently. “We don't want the bad energy to stay around.”

“The first time we did the scene with the shoving, I wanted to go offstage and cry,” said 17-year-old junior Lyndsi Skewes, who plays Brittany, one of Phoebe's tormentors.

The play, written by Prenetta during his year-long sabbatical, was inspired by the life of Phoebe Prince, a 14-year-old, self-conscious Irish immigrant who moved with her mother to South Hadley, MA, and within months of her move, took her own life, as she faced torment from bullies and her own inner demons.

“When I heard about Phoebe Prince, the image of her, 14-years-old, being bullied and taking her own life – it broke my heart,” Prenetta said. “She haunted me. She was a beautiful young girl – when you lose a young kid, all her potential's gone.”

The play's name comes from a line in “Dante's Inferno,” a book Phoebe took out of the library and mirrored the hell with which she struggled. In fact, the EHS production plays off several themes in the book, interweaving Dante's hell with Phoebe's own personal hell, Prenetta said.

Joy, 17, had to bring herself back to her early teen years to play Prince and remember what it was like to be 14 and to be that age grappling with a number of mental issues that had already caused Prince to attempt suicide several times before she succeeded in January 2010.

“I had to get into the mindset of someone who was unhappy, not just from what other people were doing, but also what she brought upon herself,” Joy said. “You have to get into a focus where you're hurting so bad that nothing is worth it, and it's so hard.”

Character names and some of the true events have been changed or fictionalized, making it more of a universal story, Prenetta said. The playwright did research on Prince to get a flavor for the teen and found her to be a very bright and articulate person. While some people might not understand some of the decisions she makes, “it's not as black and white as the media portrays it,” Prenetta said.

In the play, the trouble begins when Phoebe has a fling with Mike, Brittany's on-again, off-again boyfriend. Brittany forgives her for the indiscretion, but when it comes to light that she also slept with Mandy's boyfriend, portrayed by Flint, the torment revs up. Instead of addressing the actions of the two high school senior boys, the senior girls direct their attention and hate toward Phoebe, with verbal and physical taunts, constant texting, phone calls and messages on her Facebook page.

“Everywhere she turned, she was surrounded,” Flint said.

“It's kind of interesting the girls would hold themselves so low to hold the girl at fault, and not the boyfriend,” Joshua Feldman, 16, a sophomore who plays Alex, Mandy's boyfriend, said. “The whole Phoebe Prince story is tragic.”

Verbal abuse can be even more hurtful than physical attacks, said Kelly Stauffer, a 17-year-old senior who plays Erika, one of the trio of girls making Phoebe's life miserable. Stauffer, too, is a close friend of Joy's.

“I'm more of the physical attacker,” Stauffer said. “Brittany [Skewes' character] is the verbal attacker. It's a hundred times worse than a physical attack. It takes 20 positive comments to overrule one negative comment. Unfortunately, the negative overrule the positive. There are very few positive comments they make to her.”

If Prince were alive today, Joy would offer this advice: “Things always get better. There's always something worth living for,” she said. “I wish she could have found that. It's so hard to see sometimes, especially as a teen.”

For Prenetta, he wants his students “to understand they should choose their words carefully and honor how they treat one another.”

“Where the Sun is Silent” runs March 23 and 24 at 7:30 p.m. in Ellington High School's Gordon C. Getchell Auditorium. Tickets are $8 for adults, $6 for senior citizens and students, and can be purchased at the door. Due to the subject matter, unless supervised by an adult, middle school students and younger are not encouraged to attend. Following the performance, there will be a 20-25 minute “talk back” on bullying.

On March 25 and 26, the 45-minute production will be brought to the CT Drama Association Festival at Pomperaug High School in Southbury. If Ellington is chosen as one of the two top plays from Connecticut at CDA, it would be showcased in the New England Drama Festival, hosted this year in Massachusetts.