Tiffany Kontoyiannis is a playwright who is currently a graduate film student at USC’s school of cinematic arts. At the age of 12, she found herself being bullied at school. After watching a news report about a girl’s suicide due to bullying, Kontoyiannis decided to take action. Knowing that theatre was her passion, she took this issue and brought it to the stage. She wrote her play, The Cycle, her freshman year of high school in order to educate students, parents and administrators on the topic of bullying. She began her project at Miami Country Day School and presented the play to a variety of audiences in order to spark discussion. She then began traveling around South Florida schools and presented her play. After every presentation, The Cycle was followed by a discussion session, allowing kids to voice their opinions on the matter. Kontoyiannis' impact was so strong that schools began to take bullying as an important factor in their curriculums. In 2012, The Cycle won Florida State Thespians’ District 8 Critics Choice Award. That year Kontoyiannis also won the Miami Herald’s Silver Knight Award in the category of Drama for her efforts to stop bullying. Now living in New York City, she has worked with several anti-bullying organizations such as The NO BULL Guys and We Stop Hate. She was recently on a panel on MSNBC with Melissa Harris-Perry to speak about her views about bullying and was featured in the Miami Herald. She recently went back to Miami Country Day School to present The Cycle with many of its original cast members. NBC covered this story and made a segment about Kontoyiannis' play and project. She hopes to take The Cycle to schools in New York in order to implement an anti-bullying curriculum.
