The plays Cho Seung-Hui wrote for a creative writing class were so disturbing to some students and teachers that he was sent for counselling on account of the violence and lust for vengeance portrayed in them.
Two of his short plays which have been published on the internet are indeed unpleasant but are no more extreme than many popular horror films or even some classical plays.
As a violent revenge drama, Cho's Richard McBeef is tame in comparison to Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, and none of Cho's stage directions match the blinding of Gloucester in King Lear.
Just eight pages long, Richard McBeef is a domestic, Oedipal drama about a 13-year-old boy who accuses his stepfather of murdering his father in order to sleep with his mother and then attempting to molest the boy himself. "Damn you, you Catholic priest. Just stop it, Michael Jackson. Let me guess, you have a pet named Dick in Neverland ranch and you want me to go with you to pet him, right?" the boy says.
After the mother sides with the boy, the stepfather retreats to a garage downstairs and the boy goes to his bedroom and starts throwing darts at a picture of his stepfather.
"I hate him. Must kill Dick. Must kill Dick. Dick must die. Kill Dick . . . You don't think I can kill you, Dick? You don't think I can kill you?" the boy says.
He follows his stepfather to the garage and tries to kill him by shoving a half-eaten banana cereal bar down his throat. However, "out of sheer desecrated hurt and anger", the stepfather swings a deadly blow at the boy.
The second play, Mr Brownstone, is set in a casino, where three teenagers slip in on fake IDs and win a $5 million jackpot. As they are about to collect their winnings, their hated teacher, Mr Brownstone, tells the casino staff that the winnings are his and that the teenagers pushed him out of the way as he hit the jackpot. Sexual assault plays a role here, too, as Mr Brownstone is said to sodomise all his students, but the main theme is, once again, revenge.
- John: I wanna kill him.
- Jane: I wanna make him bleed like the way he made us kids bleed.