“If you give a little love, it will all come back to you. You know you’re going to be remembered for the things that you say and do.”

Those lyrics were sung by the chorus in the finale of “Bugsy Malone,” an Arts Alive!-produced play performed a couple of weeks ago by students at Hampden Meadows School in Barrington.

Many students at the school then took the challenge of writing their own two-minute scripts about spreading love with ideas suggested by The BAY Team, Barrington’s substance-abuse prevention coalition.

The ideas swirled around “making healthy decision and positive choices,” said Kathy Sullivan, program manager. Among the ideas:

• How to be a friend
• How to stand up for someone who is being bullied
• Online manners
• Manners as a passenger in a car
• Health ways to spend your time
• Appropriate cell phone use

Scripts were judged on how well they captured the meaning of the lyrics, said Sullivan. The winning students’ scripts were performed during the lunch hour at Hampden Meadows on Wednesday, June 6.

Dena Davis, manager of Arts Alive!, which produces four plays a year at Barrington's elementary schools, worked with the students to cast their own scripts and perform on stage. But they did a lot on their own.

“They cast fellow students to act in the plays,” she said. “And they put in a lot of extra work on their own time.”

Some of these pupils were on stage for the first time, Davis said. They performed in front of students eating lunch, chatting with friends and making noise.

The script writers and their scripts:

• Maddie Lauria, “How to Be a Good Friend”
• Montana Jacobowitz, “Arizona Is My Brother”
• Haley Testa, Meaghan Feeney, Julia Parkhurts, Ava McConnell, “Some Bullies, A New Girl and a New Beginning”
• Hanna Weinstein, “How to Stand Up For Someone’
• William Marshall Dreir, “Taking a Stand”