Stage fright: a play about a school shooting becomes too real

By Bliss Broyard

On June 9th, 20 students gathered in the black-box theatre at LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts in New York, best known as the inspiration for the hit movie and TV series “Fame” in the 1980s. It was the dress rehearsal for an end-of-year showcase of scenes written and performed by 15- and 16-year-olds. The first scene, “It Only Takes One Bite”, was about a school shooting in which a teenage girl survives but her younger brother is killed. Rehearsals for the LaGuardia show had already begun when 19 children and two teachers were gunned down at a school in Uvalde, Texas, in late May.

The playwright and director, 16-year-old Carly Gold, had been shaken by the similarities between her story and the massacre: the age of the kids, the number of people killed. She consulted with family, friends and the actors about whether to proceed with the production. Many thought it was too soon, that it would be uncomfortable for students. But Gold has a steeliness that belies her age, perhaps the product of trying to make it as an actor in New York. (She made her Broadway debut at the age of 13, playing a child in a big Irish family in Jez Butterworth’s play, “The Ferryman”, which won a Tony.) She knew how hard the actors had worked. Wasn’t theatre supposed to make people uncomfortable?