A new play about gun control (in the past and the present)
Conceived by Ginger Dayle and devised by the Voices for a New City Ensemble
Adrienne Theatre Second Stage
2030 Sansom Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
July 7-31, 2016
Something happened in Roseburg.
It's a sleepy little lumber town in southwest Oregon. It's the sort of place where one day bleeds into the next, where people work and live and love and expect no fuss or notoriety; certainly not the glare of the bright lights of the national media. It's the sort of place where you go to hide from the limelight, not to seek it. There's nothing big about it.
So it was strange when a Presidential candidate with high hopes for the highest office in the land stumbled badly there. He was expected to win the state of Oregon's democratic primary but he got well under 40% of the vote. His name was Robert F. Kennedy and the topic that threw him off was guncontrol. He was for it, Roseburg was not. A week later Kennedy would be felled by an assassin's bullet.
Something else happened in Roseburg.
The sad stories of recent American history are riddled with tales of tragedy and mayhem, loss and grief, hatred and heroism and a clamoring for answers. What are we to make of our society when blood is spilled so readily amid such volcanic chaos? Why do so many of our young men make the choice to go down in a blaze of glory and take as many innocent victims along as they can?
On October 1, 2015, we were forced to ask these questions once more as Roseburg was again thrust into the glaring light of the gun control debate.
A troubled young man opened fire on classmates at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg killing nine and wounding several more. He died by his own hand during a standoff with police. In doing so he took most of the answers to these questions with him.
What are we to make of this? We who are left behind can only wonder and hope for a better future. Will this parade of tragedies ever end? What can we do to make a difference? Is there any hope in a nation so saturated guns and blood and malice. When will it stop? We will ask these questions in Roseburg.
Click here for tickets.
Click here for our press release.
