Ron Williams, executive director of Shakespeare Walla Walla, dances with a shawl while dressed as a woman while portraying an part in the Shakespeare play “Twelfth Night” recently at Sunridge Middle School in Pendleton.

Shakespeare might not initially seem the best source for anti-bullying advice.

After all, the Bard packed his plays with bloodshed, treason, poisonings, pranking, swordplay, beheadings and a multitude of other assorted mayhem. Shakespeare taking on bullying might seem as absurd as Bernie Madoff teaching ethics.

But Shakespeare understood human behavior, said Ron Williams, executive director of Shakespeare Walla Walla. Williams believes Shakespeare plays are rife with examples of bullying and the consequences. He and two other actors from his troupe presented “Twelfth Night” on Friday to sixth graders at Sunridge Middle School and then proceeded to the classroom where they put bullying under the microscope and examined its ugly nature. The event was funded by the Education Foundation of Pendleton.

Shakespearean characters often bully one another, Williams said. In “Twelfth Night,” for example, two characters — Malvolio and Sir Andrew — are tormented unmercifully throughout the play. Sir Andrew, a rich buffoon, is an easy target. Malvolio, a grumpy and officious butler, is like the smart kid in class who everyone else loves to hate.

“The relationships between Shakespeare’s characters are always extremely clear,” he said. “It’s easy to exaggerate those relationships.”

“This play has a lot of pranking going on,” said Shakespeare Walla Walla Director of Education Kate Beck, who orchestrated the whirlwind costume and prop changes. “It’s an illustration of what happens in the cycle of violence.”

The abridged “Twelfth Night” script evolved from a collaboration between the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, the Colorado University Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence and the CU Department of Drama & Dance.

This version cuts out some of the windier original dialogue in favor of a faster, kid-friendly pace. Williams and fellow actors Clint Bidwell and Cyndi Kimmel played 16 roles and used dialogue that wove modern pop culture and technology into the 400-year-old play. At one point, Duke Orsino (an eligible bachelor played by Bidwell) walks onstage wearing baggy plaid shorts. Desperately in love with Countess Olivia and seeking music to match his mood, Orsino finds a song on his iPhone.

“If music be the food of love, play on,” he says. “Play on Bieber.”

One of the show’s bullying victims is Malvolio, the high-minded butler who becomes the victim of a plot to make him look foolish. The butler loves his beautiful employer, Olivia, and dreams of rising above his station to marry her one day. Olivia’s drunken uncle (Sir Toby Belch) and the sneaky serving lady (Maria) team up to fool the butler by sending him a fake love letter, not so far off from today’s cyberbullying. At what Malvolio thinks is Olivia’s request, he wears a goofy smile and parades around her house in bright yellow stockings. After others decide he has gone mad, Malvolio is locked up.

“You locked me in a dungeon,” Malvolio tells them after his release. “People were teasing me and I did not like it. I’ll be revenged of the whole pack of you.”

Squint a bit and this Shakespearean strife resembles the back-and-forth escalation of middle school conflict.

The production was likely the first exposure to Shakespeare for many of the 300-or-so students sprawled in front of the Sunridge stage. Brows furrowed at such words as beguile, quaff, sepulcher, clamorous, fustian and fadge used to tell this knotty tale. One of the words, “gulling,” meaning to dupe, cheat or trick, is similar to our word: bullying. During the show, the young audience members worked to grasp plot twists and turns, fidgeting at times. Physical humor brought intermittent relief, such as Williams, portraying Olivia, drawing raucous laughter as he pranced around the stage wearing a shawl and heels.

After the performance, the actors split up and visited classrooms, using discussion and improvisation to help students examine bullying and talk about ways to diffuse conflict and stop mistreatment.

Williams said part of the goal was simply to let bullying victims know they are not alone.

“A kid who is being bullied feels like they are by themselves,” said Williams, “but that’s not the case.” He made his point by asking the students, “Can anybody tell me they’ve never been bullied?”

No one raised a hand.

Sunridge Principal Dave Williams watched with interest as the students got their post-Shakespeare debriefing from the actors.

“We talk a lot about bullying here at the school,” he said, “but it was impacting for our kids to receive information from a different source.”

Williams said he doesn’t see outright bullying at Sunridge.

“By definition, with bullying, you need a target, a power imbalance and repetitiveness,” he said. “In middle school, kids are learning about relationships. Connections get kind of messy and we see mistreatment. Kids don’t treat each other very well sometimes. They are learning that their behavior affects each other negatively.”

Beck, Shakespeare Walla Walla’s education coordinator, said it another way. “We go through our lives being either the perpetrator, the victim or the bystander. In bullying, there are roles we play. They have a choice and the power to stop what is happening.”

The Education Foundation of Pendleton funded the event.

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Contact Kathy Aney at kaney@eastoregonian.com or call 541-966-0810.