Bullying

This is a pathfinder for Junior and Senior High School drama teachers. The guide will assist you in finding great resources on bullying to use in your classroom. If you need more help, our librarians welcome any questions you may have regarding your search.

Visit our Library

A great way to start your search is by visiting our library either in person or online. You can find a complete list of resources in our collection by accessing our online catalogue. To locate resources on bullying, use these suggested keywords and phrases to search the catalogue:

Subject Headings to Search in the Catalogue

To search the catalogue for Subject Headings, perform the following search:

  1. Click the MultiSeek tab in the blue menu bar
  2. Change the first Keyword drop-down menu to Subject
  3. Type one of the suggested words and phrases in the search field and click Search

Suggested word(s) and phrase(s):

  • bullying

You can also use the above subject heading(s) as Keywords. Just follow the procedure above but exchange Subject with Keyword in step 2. Your search results will be more extensive and inclusive; however, you may find some items in this type of search not directly related to your topic. Any title with your specified search word(s) in the description will appear among the search results.

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Recommended Titles

The titles below have been previewed by us and selected for this topic. For additional information on a specific title, search our catalogue or the Internet:

Bedtimes and Bullies by Volker Ludwig adapted by Dennis Foon – Children’s Musical (1987)
Kevin and Kelly make friends with Peter, the neighbourhood bully. They convince his strict father to let him sleep over with his hew-found pals.
Blackout by Darvey Anderson (2009)
A play about getting bullied, fighting back, trying to make a name for yourself, turning vicious, doing something stupid, losing everything, then finding your way again. The central character explains: “All I can remember is: I could hear screaming. It was like being in a dream but still being awake at the same time. And all I can hear is – please, don’t, stop it! And then … I don’t know. Next morning, I was in a jail cell. I didn’t know how I got there. And I was like that – aw naw, what did I do?”
The Bully Show by Brian Guehring (2006)
The Bully Show! opens with the audience arriving at the live taping of the pilot episode of a new game show. There have been some last minute changes to the show and the game show is now called “You Wanna Be a Bully.” The audience members, who are chosen to become contestants, play games where they have to identify who could be a bully or which scenes show bullying. Eventually the host, Johnny, pushes a contestant too far and the whole game show grinds to a halt. An assistant stands up to Johnny and enlists the audience to help Johnny realize that he is a bully and that bullying is a serious problem.
Cloud Busting by Helen Blakeman (2011)
A play for younger actors about making up poems and the highs and lows of first friendships. When Sam wakes up, he fully believes today will be just another ordinary day – but that’s before Mr. Mackie tells class 8M to write a poem about someone they care about. Unexpectedly, Sam volunteers to write about Davey … Davey was Sam’s friend – not that Sam wanted anyone to know that. While the cool girls in the class thought Davey was cute in a sad-dog sort of way, the tough boys – Alex and his crew – just saw Davey as different. Davey liked to dance. Davey liked to look at the clouds and see the shapes they made. Davey liked looking at the world in a different way to anybody else. But no matter how much Sam liked being with Davey, he always denied their friendship. Then one day, Alex’s bullying goes a step too far… but will Sam step in to help his friend? It’s not the ordinary day Sam thought it was going to be.
Dog Sees God by Bert V. Royal (2006)
When CB’s dog dies from rabies, CB begins to question the existence of an afterlife. His best friend is too burnt out to provide any coherent speculation; his sister has gone goth; his ex-girlfriend has recently been institutionalized; and his other friends are too inebriated to give him any sort of solace. But a chance meeting with an artistic kid, the target of this group’s bullying, offers CB a peace of mind and sets in motion a friendship that will push teen angst to the very limits. Drug use, suicide, eating disorders, teen violence, rebellion and sexual identity collide and careen toward an ending that’s both haunting and hopeful.
Gypsy by Arthur Laurents – musical
The story of a bullying, ruthless stage mother who attempts to drive her two daughters into show business. Together they travel the entire country, playing in seamy small town theatres. One daughter elopes; the other, realizing that vaudeville is dying except for burlesque, breaks away from her mother and becomes a star.
Hippo Dancing by Robert Morley (1955)
A bullying father and husband learns to accept his family as it is when he realizes that his wife has had an offer from another man and has threatened to leave, and, when he learns that his oldest son can earn a respectable living as a dress designer, and, his youngest son is not a gigolo but in love. Comedy.
I Met a Bully on the Hill by Martha Brooks (1995)
J.J., a young girl from the country, runs into more than she can handle when she encounters Raymond, a bully who takes out his frustrations and fears by terrorizing her. With the help of her new friends, David, an imaginative youngster with ambitions to be the next Wynton Marsalis, and Karla, a physically powerful ally with a soft heart, J.J. is able to confront both her fears and Raymond’s attacks and solve her problem.
New Canadian Kid by Dennis Foon (1981)
A play about immigrant children in Canada in which the audience hears the thoughts and fears of a new Canadian society and comes to understand what Canadian society feels like to him or her. Funny but serious.
Power Play by Lindsay Price (2003)
A dramatic play sure to evoke discussion and dialogue. A gunshot is heard. Which of the five characters did it and why? Was it the Goth girl? The football star? The super-intelligent geek? High school violence is a hot media topic, but it is too often simplistically portrayed by putting teens into tidy categories and pointing at the outsider. Power Play explores the realities and the stereotypes of high school violence – not just the brutal shock of the school shooting, but also verbal harassment and bullying. Violence is about power. So is high school.
Prairie Tomten by Mary Love (2005)
Prairie Tomten, about a 12 year-old girl and her friendship with an elderly Aboriginal man called Mr. Bitternose. Love addresses issues of bullying both large and small as she weaves together the story of Laura—and her attempt to protect a feral cat from the “Town Girls,” who seem to enjoy tormenting her with little or no motivation—and the story of Mr. Bitternose. “Mr. B” seems to know more than he wishes to remember or to tell about the “starlight rides” given to Natives by police officers who dump their passengers on the outskirts of town, sometimes in the dead of winter, to find their way home on foot. The scandal of the freezing death of a young man in this manner underscores the play.
The Secret Life of Girls by Linda Daugherty (2006)
A window into the tumultuous world of a group of middle school girls is opened in this dramatization of the destructive effects of girls’ bullying. The girls’ attempts to deal with bullying in the form of gossiping, name-calling, exclusion, rumors, back-biting, cliques and manipulation as they struggle to find a friend, a place in the group and themselves range from humorous to heart breaking. Based upon interviews with girls on the giving and receiving end of bullying, The Secret Life of Girls also dramatizes how bullying behaviors are facilitated by technologies such as cell phones, e-mail, chat rooms and instant messaging.
Seesaw by Dennis Foon (1993)
The story reveals how the balances and trusts between children and their friends, parents and society are a constant teeter-tottering of values and predicaments. Charla is the new girl at school, nervous about her shabby clothes and mourning her parents’ break-up; Paige, Charla’s new friend, is only concerned with fashion, gossip and her good-looking boyfriend, but the emptiness of her life soon comes to light; Josh, a shy and timid loner, neglected by his career-minded parents, resorts to magic in order to make himself disappear when being victimized by the school bully, Adam, who passes on the rough treatment he receives at home. With adult characters represented only by puppets and inanimate objects the unique world of the four young people in Seesaw reaches us through their eyes.
The Shape of a Girl by Joan MacLeod (2002)
The Shape of a Girl’ goes far beyond a simple dramatization of the seemingly inexplicable code of silence and tacit complicity which surrounded the sensational Reena Virk murder in 1977 on which the play is based. It speaks eloquently and compassionately to a world increasingly dominated by all forms of collectivised and ritualized tribalist hatred, and offers the embrace of trust as the only way out of this circle of violence.

Additional Online Resources and Selected Web sites

Continue your online search by looking for websites with ideas on teaching about bullying. Type drama bullying in your favourite search engine.

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