Dramatic aftermath
NEW PLAY IN WESTPORT PULLS BACK CURTAIN ON SMALL- TOWN TRAGEDY
Matthew Greene was 12 when two students, some 1,170 miles away, killed 12 of their classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School before killing themselves. Dozens of students also were injured in that mass shooting in Littleton, Colo.
“That was the first time I felt that school was not a safe place,” says Greene, who grew up in Sacramento, Calif. After 1999’ s Columbine tragedy, Greene sought answers — why would someone do this and how could it be prevented? Subsequent school shootings only brought more questions.
Some six years ago, Greene, by then a playwright living in Brooklyn, N. Y., revisited some of those inquiries that had been percolating. He wanted to explore the essence of grief and how its individual manifestations shape a community’s response to a collective tragedy. The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown in 2012 spurred him to redouble his efforts to bring this story to life. In a week, “Thousand Pines” will have its world premiere at the Westport Country Playhouse.
In it, three families in a small town struggle six months after a student has brought a gun to Thousand Pines Junior High School and killed his classmates. Adrift in anger, hurt and denial, each family and the members within them work to make their way out of the confusion and pain, in ways that are not always understood by their loved ones. Taken on a grander scale, Greene, 32, says the play shows how a community at large can react in divergent ways, sometimes creating conflict and angst that compounds the tragedy.
Without dwelling on the violent act, or the politics of gun violence, Greene focuses on the aftermath, largely through the eyes of three different woman — mothers whose stake in this tragedy is profound. “One wants to pretend the wound is healed. Another seeks retribution, which is how she needs to keep healing. The other is allowing herself to sit in the pain and feel it. None of them are right or wrong. They are just honestly doing what they can,” Greene says.
“In an ideal world, we would make space to let them to grieve as they each see fit,” he adds. “But the challenge happens … when those around us are not grieving in the same way.”
Amid the angst, there is understanding and love — something Greene believes will resonate with audiences.
“Thousand Pines” features a cast of six actors ( Katie Ailio, Anne Bates, Joby Earle, Kelly McAndrew, William Ragsdale and Andrew Veenstra) directed by American actor and theater director Austin Pendleton.
The play closes the playhouse’s 2018 season, nearly two years after a reading as part of the playhouse’s New Works Circle Initiative. The initiative, which launched in 2016, is financially supported by playhouse members. It seeks to develop new plays and musicals.
Such an initiative nurtures exploration of contemporary and sometimes controversial societal issues, Greene says.
His work now joins others that have been shaped by national tragedies, such as “The Laramie Project,” a 2000 play about the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo. by Moises Kaufman and members of his Tectonic Theater Project, and several spurred by the 2012 tragedy in Newtown, including 2017’ s “26 Pebbles,” by Eric Ulloa.
“I feel this play is in the right place at the right time and in the right hands,” Greene says.
At first reading, Mark Lamos, the playhouse’s artistic director, could see it was a play with depth and nuance that could take an audience into a difficult space — the convergence of families whose personal losses are all connected, and, at times, in conflict with one another.
“It’s a way to get a conversation started,” he said. During the play’s Oct. 30 to Nov. 17 run, there will be programs that encourage community discussions about the play’s themes.
Greene’s work, while fiction, looks into what happens once the news crews leave and a community works to reknit itself amid difficult decisions. How great is its capacity for forgiveness? What does it mean to return to normal? How does one stop it from happening again?
“These families are woven together, with all of them just trying to make it one day at a time,” Pendleton says. “( The broader theme) is how are they going to live with it the rest of their lives.”
When it comes to setting the stage for discourse on difficult subjects, Greene sees power in using storytelling to form connections.
“With live theater, there is that shared contract among a group of strangers that come together in the dark and watch a story together. I think that represents unity and understanding … and a place where people can find common ground to talk about these difficult issues,” he says. chennessy@ hearstmediact. com; Twitter: @ xtinahennessy