This week’s blog is authored by Barbara Pitts McAdams, co-founder of #HereToo, interview-based plays of survivorship and youth activism in the gun violence prevention movement. Barbara is co-author of MOMENT WORK: Tectonic Theater Project’s Process of Devising Theater.

#HereToo-CCC (Chicago) Photo credit: *Barbara McAdams*

After a mass shooting, theater artists often come together quickly to create ten-minute plays, as with After Orlando or Code Red Playwrights. These “rapid response theater” events provide an immediate focus to gather, process, grieve and galvanize for action. I admire the nimbleness of these art-i-vists. The work I’ve been trained to make with Tectonic Theater Project often takes years to coalesce! But there is value in both. And for the past 20 years, I’ve experienced the impact our best known play, The Laramie Project, has on young theater makers and their audiences. This impact inspired my creation of #HereToo, a platform for oral histories, podcast episodes and a series of interview-based plays of survivorship and youth activism in the gun violence prevention movement.

#HereToo-WWU (Bellingham, WA). Photo credit Rachel Bayne Photography

The Laramie Project is a unique phenomenon. Since 2001, there have been over 3,000 productions. Created from interviews with residents of Laramie, Wyoming, the play chronicles events before and after the 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard. The Matthew Shepard Foundation credits The Laramie Project as influential in shifting consciousness around LGBTQIA+ issues, contributing to the 2009 passage of our national hate crimes legislation, co-named in Matthew’s memory. As a co-creator and performer in The Laramie Project, I’m often tapped to lead workshops and audience talkbacks for high school and college productions. I’ve experienced the fervor generated when young people engage with this work, embodying real-life characters struggling to understand their world. I wondered, how can I make another interview-based play with age appropriate roles for teens, that might inspire them to be engaged citizens? And could I create a form that gives them agency and opportunity to generate and structure some of the content?

These questions were in the back of my mind when I attended the New York City March For Our Lives rally in the wake of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. I got that tingly feeling an artist gets when inspiration hits. I reached out to fellow Tectonic colleague Jimmy Maize and we agreed - we wanted to make a play chronicling this astonishing moment of youth activism. Our first impulse was to go to Parkland.

We lead a theater devising workshop with drama teacher Melody Herzfeld and the MSD theater students. This felt appropriate and compassionate, but to follow up with a request to interview these survivors and activists did not - their trauma was so fresh, and their stories were being amplified in media, documentaries and books. In June of 2018, Jimmy and I had a residency with young theater artists from across the country who recounted the gun violence and youth activism happening in their communities. So we pivoted to sharing stories that don’t get amplified.

For the past five years Jimmy and I have traveled the country doing interviews with young activists making change in their local communities (hence the name “here, too”). These interviews became the content of three different #HereToo plays, each shaped by local experiences of gun violence and the conversations and actions that follow. With the help of project dramaturg JeanMarie Higgins at Penn State, we also have an ongoing #HereToo podcast, with students interviewing local youth activists. Our last production #HereToo-CCC (Columbia College Chicago) was paired with a stage adaptation Jimmy and artist Andres Gonzales adapted from his photo essay collection American Origami, (also featured on this blog). Our theater students attended the gallery exhibit of Andres’ photographs, accompanied by other artists’ work ranging from the poetic to the shocking. Our students were very affected by the visual and multi-media images, and we had to make sure our process was trauma informed.

Combating gun violence can feel quite hopeless. Our goal is for young creators and performers of our #HereToo plays to tap into the optimism, passion and courage of the plays’ activists, and for audiences to come away with a call to action - knowing each individual can play a part – large or small – in moving toward solutions. As Parkland’s Cameron Casky proclaimed in his speech at the March for Our Lives: the voters are coming. We hope our work empowers these young citizens to vote, to create, to mobilize, to believe it's possible to make change. To be the change.

Artivism on Stage

Gun Violence Resources

Taking Aim: Art That Addresses Gun Violence