“Including Shooter,”
a play among an increasing number of works about mass shootings, raises questions that it does not answer, writes critic Matthew J. Palm.
What if you could hear a mass shooter say he was sorry? There’s a moment where that happens in the sometimes disturbing “Including Shooter,” by Nicholas C. Pappas. The play, onstage at Breakthrough Theatre, is one of a growing number of works in an unfortunately relevant theatrical genre — the massshooter play.
“Including Shooter” walks a riskier and more potentially off-putting path than Playwrights’ Round Table’s “Blight” or Orlando Shakes’ “Pluto,” two other Central Florida productions with similar subject matter.
All three works want to say something about what could drive a person to commit such an atrocity, but of them only “Including Shooter” has the audacity to mix its fictional story with the real-life tragedies of Columbine, Sandy Hook and more. It’s a gambit that creates a double-edged sword.
Watching actors depict the murderers of schoolchildren makes for attention-getting theater, and kudos to director Wade Hair’s young cast for painting chilling portraits with poise beyond their years. Of course, these actors — who appear to be in their teens or early 20s — have grown up in a world where mass shootings are regular occurrences, a fact that adds another level of pathos to the production. (The moody musical cues help, as well.)
But hearing these murderers squabble over who killed more people — essentially who’s the “bigger man” — is repellant. There’s really no other way to put it.
That conversation takes place toward play’s end, when the real killers encounter Pappas’ fictional shooter in a kind of afterlife limbo (the playbill describes it as “a void, outside of time and space.”) While it does boast vivid acting, there’s no way for the scene to truly satisfy because as is pointed out — repeatedly — there’s no good answer as to why people start shooting.
Better is the bulk of the play, which focuses on how a fictional high-school shooting affected the students caught in it. The structure, a series of vignettes, allows for memorable moments. Shay Bradford and Grace Foltz have an appealing natural banter as two old friends who learn new things about each other at a reunion. Theresa Jett projects a lovely realness as a fragile woman whose emotional scars from the shooting have taken her down a dark and lonely road.
Coletyn P. Hentz plays James Smith, who killed 13 classmates and himself while shooting up Lincoln High School. Hentz does a fine job of giving the troubled man layers — he’s brash yet vulnerable. But while the playwright is quick to scorn common motivations attributed to shooters — a love of violent video games, for example — he doesn’t let us peer far enough into James’ psyche. So Hentz is trapped playing an enigma — and the audience finds no answers.