When life flash-mobbed before my eyes

'IT WAS MY BUDDY, my goofy and loving and hilarious friend. He was being kicked. He probably had never harmed anyone in his life and he was curled in the little ball and a mob of kids were kicking him and laughing."

I was at Boys' Latin of Philadelphia Charter School last week listening to a group of high-schoolers say these words, Greek chorus-style, during a rehearsal of their original show, "PHLash: A Mob Story." They will perform it tonight through Saturday.

My heart beat faster and my palms got clammy. I got that tugging feeling at the bottom of my stomach that tells you something is wrong.

They were talking about my boyfriend. They were talking about the person I come home to every night and the person I watched slowly heal after my friends and I crossed paths with a flash mob on June 25. It left us all shaken and Emily Guendelsberger with a broken leg. They were talking about the person who I watched wide-eyed as he slept that night to make sure his chest kept rising and falling.

"They turned from monsters back into kids," the students intoned together to end the piece.

The words they were speaking came from my friend, Meghan Donnelly. Scott Sheldon, an English teacher at Boys' Latin, and the play's dramaturg, had asked Meg to share her experience. Meg's words became a part of the play made up of 43 interviews - from police to Occupy Philly protesters to the NAACP to a kid who had participated in the flash mobs - that make up the docudrama style show.

For the most part, the boys conducted their own interviews. Marqeas Woolford-Johnson, a 15-year-old from North Philly, took to interviewing so well they wrote him a part in the show. "Our teacher said the interview questions were a guide not a map, so I just went off on it," Woolford-Johnson said.

Woolford-Johnson first learned about flash mobs from the news, which he normally avoids because he prefers to "stay happy."

"My thesis question was [that a flash mob] was a youth protest that had no purpose and with no purpose it turned violent," said Gregory DeCandia, head of theater at Boys' Latin and the producing artistic director of theater company BCKSEET Productions.

For the most part, the students seemed to agree with DeCandia. Seon Gilding, 16, said he was at one of the South Street flash mobs in 2010, but only because he heard there were girls there.

"You must be really bored if you want to attack random people, especially at this age," said Myles Hinsey, 15, from West Philly. "Do your homework. Play a video game. Do something."

Hinsey shares my experience. He's in the play, too, pantomiming a scene of when he was jumped after staying late at school to work on a science-fair project. Hinsey said he doesn't hang around the types of kids who participate in flash mobs - who kicked my boyfriend until he bled, or broke my friend's leg - and if they included him in the mayhem he would decline. "My first thought is, 'They don't know me that well,' " Hinsey said.

Last summer, a whole swath of black youth in this city was deemed dangerous. But these kids at Boys' Latin, they're not dangerous. They go to school six days a week and see a future after high school.

After rehearsal, I walked to the El with seniors James Powell and Anthony Caffie. Powell, a hulk of a kid with a heart-melting smile, talked about how his acting inspiration came from watching pro wrestling, while Caffie gabbed about how he loved making costumes and had three sewing machines. These two kids didn't deserve the stigma thrust upon them.

"We don't want to pretend we have some big cosmic answers as to why flash mobs happen or act as if we have a solution to all of Philadelphia's problems," Sheldon said. "But if we do have a message, the play speaks to the need for community and relationships coming together in a time of crisis. If that's what people take away, we'll be happy with it."