PLAY WARNS AGAINST EVILS OF METH

Green Thumb Theatre's newest work wound up Revelstoke Secondary
students last Friday with a powerful and haunting hip hop
presentation: Cranked.

Written by Michael P. Northey, Cranked renders the harrowing tale of
Stan (Kyle Cameron), a teenage boy caught in the deadly grip of
meth-amphetamine.

The RSS gym quaked with the beats of Vancouver hip hop artists
Kyprios and Stylust the script flowed to.

Twitching, "tweaking" and painfully groaning with pain both physical
and emotional, Stan's story held Revelstoke teens entranced.

At the age of 16, when Stan's parents divorce, the raw narrative
begins; expressing the internal rage and fear he felt.

From that point Stan's alienation intensifies and with language
explicit and raw, the character releases the agony trapped inside.

"All the things he hates is a part of me," Stan raps in one of many
startlingly honest and insightful lines.

It's those kind of feelings that Stan tries to "numb" with meth.

"The first time I did meth - I saw God - Euphoria!" Stain exclaimed with awe.

"I will never have that feeling again."

Stan becomes so steeped with meth, literally, physically suffused, he
picks at his scabs and smokes them.

It gets him high. There that much meth in his system.

"I'm living among the dead," Stan disturbingly declares.

He relates horrific scenes of paranoid delusions, hallucinations and crime.

The character portrays the physical and mental decay meth had on his
life with unambiguous, unequivocal repercussions.

Though based on a character named Stan, the facts of meth are true
actor Kyle Cameron said to RSS students.

The physical effect of meth is devastating. With the ingredients of
Drano mixed with lighter fluid, acetone and ammonia, Cameron said it
is no wonder that a "rock" of meth can liquefy a piece of steak in hours.

"Imagine what it does to your body?" Cameron challenged.

Informing RSS students that addiction to meth happens after just two
doses and that the rate of relapse is 92 per cent, Cameron also
warned that other street drugs like "e" and "weed" are sometimes
"cut" or "laced" with the devastating drug.

No matter what position one may take on the acceptability or legality
of various drugs,Cranked makes it clear there is no room for
recreational use with meth; that meth is an evil that will take you
and possess you, most likely to the grave.