Teenagers in Vanderhoof were given an education in social media from a recent play by Green Thumb Theatre about cyber-bullying.
The play is called Tagged and was written by Dave Deveau, NVSS played host to Tagged twice on Wednesday, Dec. 11.
"It's all about taking that extra second before you press send to think about the consequences," said Brenda Pilatzke, Stage Manager.
The storyline is about two 16 year-olds who are being interrogated in two separate interview rooms by the same officer, there was no wall or anything so the students saw it all at once.
There was a teenage house party the week before and a young underage girl got drunk and passed out and some photos of her in various positions showed up online with disparaging comments written on them.
The police are trying to track down who uploaded these photos so it becomes a kind of mystery-thriller for teens about internet abuse and cyber-bullying.
The show runs for about 45 minutes and has been playing in high schools all over BC since it opened about four weeks ago.
"Green Thumb has been doing this kind of work for close to 40 years now," said Patrick McDonald, artistic director. "We do primarily new plays, we commission playwrights to do them for us, so we're always looking at what subjects are of interest to our main audience."
Internet abuse has been first and foremost in the minds of teenagers across Canada for a while now. One can think of several tragic examples where individuals have been abused online or cyber-bullied into taking their own lives.
"This isn't based on anyone's story, it's just based in that world," said McDonald "It asks teenagers to think about what is appropriate behaviour. It doesn't tell them not to use websites or social media but asks them to think about what they would say in real life compared to what they would say online."
Green Thumb theatre has made several hit productions in the past. One of their latest plays was called Cranked and it was about crystal meth addiction as well as other shows about gangs and teen violence.