Gun Play

KERA
10/05/2020

The year 2018 was the deadliest in American history for school shootings. It was also the year a tiny theater company of teen actors in Dallas set out on a nationwide journey to create a stage play about the country’s deep divisions over guns. They were determined to explore Second Amendment rights, mass shootings, background checks and automatic weapons — all of it to produce an original piece of live theater.

In the podcast “Gun Play,” hosts Hady Mawajdeh and Jerome Weeks follow Cry Havoc Theater Company as its student actors trek across the country to talk to people on all sides of the American gun debate. They hear from the mother of a classmate in Dallas who used her dad’s hunting rifle to take her own life. They talk to a father in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, who’s still dealing with the heart-wrenching agony of his 6-year-old son being gunned down at school. They visit a gun range whose uncompromising owner encourages the actors to fire a fully-automatic AR-15 — and then shares his fears of a totalitarian American government coming to take away his firearms.

The actors’ journey leads them from the U.S. Capitol to the snowy streets of Newtown, Connecticut, and to the floor of the National Rifle Association’s annual conference. “Gun Play” chronicles that seven-month odyssey and the insights the students gain as they leave the realm of abstract argument and dive into our nation’s festering issues about firearms. The podcast is often visceral, occasionally difficult to listen to — and because this is a troupe of teenagers, there are moments of distracting fun. And the project documents the personal toll this debate has on cast members from tough neighborhoods who’ve felt the trauma of losing friends and family members to gun violence.

Often, the national debate over firearms is portrayed as one side battling the other, pro-gun versus anti-gun. But “Gun Play” is an honest look through the eyes of teens, many of whom began with no settled opinion about firearms. They discover the argument over guns isn’t binary. There’s complexity, there’s nuance. And there’s drama.

Through the actors’ experiences and interviews, the five episodes of “Gun Play” help listeners gain a deeper understanding of the roles guns and gun rights play in modern American life — especially as mass school shootings continue and the students come to understand, on a direct level, what’s at stake. Unlike other portrayals of teens in the media, this project treats these young actors seriously by following their different paths, their growing understanding, even how they’ve come to view violence in their own neighborhoods.

Along with all of the exposure to guns, gun rights and related issues, “Gun Play” shines a light on the craft of making “documentary theater,” a fast-growing genre that combines journalism and artistic expression. In the wake of the podcast, Cry Havoc Theater Company, a small outfit with only three part-time staff members, reports that donations have increased — even against the headwinds of the pandemic. Cry Havoc’s founder says schools, youth theater companies and professional performers around the country have contacted her about the students’ play.

Finally, it’s worth noting that this nonfiction audio series arrived just as gun violence, firearms sales and suicide rates began to soar during the pandemic. In recent months, medical experts have warned there’s an impending “suicide epidemic” on the way — when it already has become a leading cause of death among adolescents. Law enforcement and criminal justice researchers are also worried that the recession and the joblessness spurred by the pandemic could lead to more mass shootings, more domestic abuse, more gun violence.

All of that makes “Gun Play” a one-of-a-kind piece of arts journalism that illuminates a seemingly intractable social issue with gripping stories and engrossing characters.

LINK to content online

Individual Episodes:
Episode One
Episode Two
Episode Three
Episode Four
Episode Five

Submitted by Hady Mawajdeh.