On November 29th, Morris Knolls hosted an assembly to spread  knowledge on Mental Health Awareness and drug abuse.  Comedian, John Morello, came to Morris Knolls to present his one man show on depression, drug abuse, and bullying. Morello acted as five different characters in his play, DIRT. Each character’s story blended into the next throughout the show and in the end they all come together full circle. During the assembly itself John made the performance come to life by really getting into these characters personalities and including props so each character would stand out.

Morello’s explanation as to how he came up with the idea of DIRT was, “I wanted to do a one man show that was not for school. All of the performances I was thinking of in my head had the same theme running in them and all of the characters used the word DIRT throughout it.”

The administration at Morris Knolls believed that this would be a more beneficial approach to this topic than many of the lectures students have heard since  elementary school. Over the course of students’ educational careers schools have always tried to teach students about the topic of drugs and bullying in an effort to minimize their prevalence. Previous discussion of these topics have been factual versus telling stories and showing students what could happen. Unlike those past lessons John told students a story and showed them what could happen when someone is bullied as well as suffering from depression, and drug abuse.

Vice Principal of Morris Knolls, Mr. Haug, said that Morello’s approach to this topic was “One of the best and most relatable presentations we have had for kids. People in the audience could relate to at least one of his characters. He had five different viewpoints not just one per-son’s story and everything tied together at the end because each character knew each other at the end and it all just blended.”

Likewise, students from Morris Knolls had nothing but kind things to say about the assembly. Eleventh grader, Sara Culleny, shared similar points of view on this approach to the one man show. She stated that “Yes this was beneficial because it was really eye opening for me and hearing someone talk about this was really cool to see because we only hear about this stuff in health but even then it’s all factual based and not emotion. No one really talks about these topics even if they are in a health room so just being able to hear and see that people going through this are not alone was really nice.”

Culleny also added, “It was an  interesting and completely different way of getting the point across and I kind of liked it better because it caught my attention and it didn’t really bore me and seeing how it all came together was really eye opening.”

When Morello was presenting he had a majority of the audience captivated with his witty jokes and sarcastic sense of humor. He knew how to balance humor with seriousness which was something that was relatively new to see during an assembly.

As for the future of Morris Knolls, the administration believes they have found something that will stick with the students that attend this high school.

Mr. Haug explained the overall reaction to the show saying, “It was different enough to the point where they [students] would remember the message. The number of people that responded to the survey we sent out afterwards shows that it definitely stuck with a majority of the students.”