Caridad Svich: Gun Violence Takes Center Stage
By Bureen Ruffin
“I’m gonna go knock on her door — knock-knock-knock — and when she opens it … I am gonna walk up to her and I’m gonna put the barrel of this revolver right up against her skull… I am. I am gonna do that and then I’m gonna smile at her, smile and lean in real close, all up in her face and I’ll whisper, ‘Was it worth it, CeeCee …’ right before I blow her fucking head off.” — excerpt from “Cecelia,” a play by Neil LaBute, featured in 24 Gun Control Plays.
Guns are a cultural artifact, writ large. They have become a part of our collective American consciousness almost without notice, a fact that makes the debates over the role of guns in our society difficult to navigate and the issue of gun violence particularly murky. Even so, the troubling normalcy of mass shootings at schools and on college campuses, shootings involving the police, and the polarizing debates over gun control simply underscore our collective responsibility to deal with America’s gun problem.
In 2013, Caridad Svich, the 2012 Obie Award winning playwright, and fellow dramaturg Zac Kline, launched the Gun Control Theatre Action (GCTA) through their NoPassport Alliance. GCTA was set to coincide with the March On Washington for Gun Control, which came on the heels of the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown Connecticut, the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. The incident, which left 20 children between the ages of six and seven dead, reignited the gun control debate in the United States.
The goal of the GCTA was to create a space for dialogue and healing through art. Dramatists and poets were asked to submit short plays that would be presented at Georgetown University’s Gonda Theatre in Washington D.C. Shortly after the Newtown shooting, a friend and fellow playwright asked Svich if she was planning to write a play addressing gun control. Svich admits to initially feeling a sense of distress and despondency about how theatre might address the issue Svich felt it was urgent to speak out, especially since calls for gun control seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. “The GCTA was a kind of turning point,” says Svich, when I met with her to talk about her work relating to gun violence and social activism, “because the laws didn’t change [after the Sandy Hook shooting].”
The new plays took on the issue of gun control and gun violence fearlessly and unflinchingly, asking audiences to witness, reflect, and think critically about their own feelings and beliefs on the culture of guns in the United States. The short works from the GCTA were later collected in the book 24 Gun Control Plays, edited by Kline and Svich and published in 2013 by NoPassport Press, offering readers the opportunity to thoughtfully consider multiple viewpoints on the gun control debate.
