JAY – On the basketball court, there are rules, boundaries and referees to blow the whistle when things go too far.

In life, and especially in relationships, it’s not like that, Guy Durichek of Add Verb Productions of Portland told high school students in Rangeley and high school sophomores in Jay last week.

Using props familiar to teenagers – such as a pair of dark sunglasses, a basketball and a cell phone – Durichek performed “You the Man,” a one-man play that addresses unhealthy relationships, dating violence and sexual assault.

Since its debut two years ago, the play has been seen by 30,000 people in 12 states.

While not a cure-all toward ending abuse and assault, the show does get people talking and thinking. Durichek is optimistic that it might even set changes in motion.

Six different characters, all men who are in relationships with people who are or have been victimized, are portrayed in the play by Durichek. He switches roles from a concerned professor to a macho athlete by taking off a lab coat and picking up the basketball.

Rounded out by a police officer, a cool jive-talking advice-giver, a concerned father and a naive friend, each is tied together by a relationship with the fictional Jenna, a character who is never seen onstage. But her pain as she suffers in an abusive relationship drives the play.
Not alone
Above all else, the play shows students they are not alone, whether they are a concerned friend or the victim of abuse.

Students “need to learn how to recognize abusive behavior, how to help a friend, family member or themselves avoid an unhealthy situation,” says Kristen Plummer, the school-based advocate from Sexual Assault Victims Emergency Services of Farmington, an organization that helped bring the program to the Rangeley and Jay schools.

“I think this play is important for students to see because all people have the right to be in healthy, safe relationships. We would be doing our young people a great disservice to not provide them with this information. If young people get the information and skills they need now, they may be the break in their own family’s cycle of violence.”

“You the Man” was in the two local schools thanks to a grant received by Add Verb Productions from the Maine Community Foundation.

As Durichek shifted from character to character, Jay students followed him, enthralled by the action. Some laughed. Some looked scared.

Afterward, students participated in small discussion groups led by SAVES staff to talk about what they’d seen on the stage, and what they see in their own lives.

Sixteen-year-old Jay High School student Felicia Floyd said she thought the performance was a better way to give students information than a lecture. Some parts of the play, such as how the basketball player and his teammates talked about women as conquests, were realistic she said.

What would have affected her more though, Floyd said, was if someone who’d been a victim of sexual assault or relationship violence had come in and spoken.

Plummer isn’t surprised by the relatively unemotional outward reactions.

“For some, I think the issues were really close to home. For some, it gave them the safe place to talk about what they see and hear in their communities, about some of the dynamics of dating violence and sexual assault and what they can do to prevent or intervene in abuse in their communities,” she said.

“I think it is going to take a while for the students to fully process the play.”

For more information, log onto www.addverbproductions.com or contact Kristen Plummer of SAVES at 778-9522.
sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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