Photo: Little Fang Photo
Despite featuring gun use, the Tony-winning Broadway revival ofOklahoma!is deeply committed to activism against gun violence.
Shine MSD is a program at Stoneman Douglas High School, that aims to use the arts to aid in mental health and healing. The program led the students on their trip to the Big Apple.
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Several students noted that at several points during the show there were elements that reminded them of the tragic day that left 17 people dead and 17 injured.
“After everything that happened at our school, it kind of felt like we were living in this bubble of time that stopped, because you don’t really know. Time isn’t really a thing after. It’s just kind of like what happened to you,” said 18-year-old Sawyer Garrity during the post-show discussion.
“At the end it was sort of like disorganized chaos in a way because you had silhouettes of people. I think I could really relate to like the shock of everything. Like the moments when shots are fired and you weren’t expecting it,” recalled Andrea Pena, 17, another student from Parkland.
Little Fang Photo
Oklahoma!
on Broadway
AsOrange Is the New Black‘s Alysia Reiner, who moderated the panel, said, “Art allows us to look at things, when it’s on a stage or on a screen, allowing us to take a little bit of a distance and sometimes feel in a different way. There’s a safety when there’s that distance. And there’s a magic that can happen when we experience that and then can talk about it afterwards.
“That’s why we make art — to talk about things as this way of communicating. And to evoke change.”
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!is now playing Broadway.
source: people.com
