DramaDogs will perform Thank You for Flushing My Head in the Toilet and Other Rarely Used Expressions, a dramedy by Jonathan Dorf, at 7 p.m. this Thursday and Friday in the Santa Barbara High School auditorium.
The performance addresses the issue of bullying.
Tickets are $10 general admission and $5 students. All proceeds will benefit the Santa Barbara High performing arts program.
Santa Barbara High School’s intermediate and advanced theater arts students will perform the acclaimed play.
According to the DramaDogs Web site: “Motivated by the current social climate, DramaDogs sought out Otto Layman, director of the theater arts program at Santa Barbara High who was inspired by the idea of collaborating and affording his students the opportunity to work with a professional company from the community.”
“The opportunity to collaborate with amazing artists and great teachers is not one that comes along often in our insular world,” Layman said. “In addition, it was a great source of renewal and craftsmanship for me personally as an artist. Here at Santa Barbara High School, we try to give our theater students as professional an experience as we can. To be able to do that and to work on a piece that is timely, intelligent and great theater is, to my mind, a gift.”
Central characters are Achilles and Helen. For both of them, getting bullied is a dismal fact of life. Achilles regularly has his head flushed in the toilet, and Helen invents reasons to arrive late to school so she can avoid a vicious clique. When cool girl Glinda magically materializes and offers a way out, they each jump at the chance. But Glinda’s solution is to turn them into the very people who have tormented them. Can Achilles and Helen find another way out? You will need to see the play to find out.
Thank You for Flushing My Head in the Toilet and Other Rarely Used Expressions is funded in part by the Community Arts Grant Program, in partnership with the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission.
— Barbara Keyani is the administrative services and communications coordinator for the Santa Barbara School Districts.