No Harm, No Foul impresses audiences

Students from the CVHS theater department have created a stunning snapshot of adolescent life in their newest production No Harm, No Foul, an original play about a high school lockdown.  The play was co-written by Castro Valley acting instructor Michael Lushington and award-winning New York playwright and actor Gino Dilorio.

Lushington, also the director of the play, explained that, in lockdowns, “life has a funny way of inserting itself anywhere, and our children understand much more than we know.”  In an effort to make the lockdown scenario as genuine as possible, both Lushington and Dilorio consistently asked for input and suggestions from the high school actors.  The play, as a result, is a collaboration of diverse adult and student perspectives.

From the very beginning of the play, the mood is intense and poignant.  The first scene involves the entire cast engaging in choreographed hand motions to Green Day’s hit song “21 Guns.”  The characters forms their fingers into the shape of a gun and, in sync with the passionate beat of the song, they alternate between pointing it at themselves and then at a different character.

Following the first scene, a voice over an intercom asks all students to remain calm because a lockdown has commenced.  From then on, a series of vignettes are introduced one after another in various areas around the school, including the bathroom, the gymnasium, the cafeteria, and multiple classrooms.

Each vignette illustrates a different circumstance that might be found in an actual school lockdown, including two girls having a fistfight, a couple discussing their relationship, and a girl recording videos of herself.

As the lockdown drags on and each storyline progresses, the relationships amongst the students change and heavier topics are discussed, including life, death, pregnancy, intimacy, drugs, secrets, and family issues.  In the end, the principal announces that the lockdown was a false alarm and the students go rushing off like everything is normal.  After all, no harm, no foul, right?

Each actor does a spectacular job in delivering his or her respective monologues and dialogues with flawless emotion.  While watching the scenes, I found myself relating different characters to my own peers and identifying with all of the teenage mannerisms that each actor so acutely perfected.

In all, No Harm, No Foul is a masterful look into the dynamics of a school lockdown.  It clearly shows that, although many students disregard the importance of such events, lockdowns can actually serve as periods of intense self-reflection in which, as Dilorio says, “the possibilities of the teenage mind are endless.”