377: Lebanon High School Students Take to the Stage to Tackle The Issue of School Shootings
Seth Kelly and Arlo Hastings, both juniors at Lebanon High School, are directors, producers, and playwrights. In youth theater circles, wearing director/producer hats and authoring an original work may not be entirely unusual. What sets this particular work apart is the subject: gun violence in schools and its effects on a community. The play captures the views and voices of those at the issue’s very center —high school students—who live everyday with the risk and fear that gun violence continues to create and that haunts every classroom without exception. Who better to speak up and be heard?
Their play, 377, takes its title from the number of school shootings that took place between the violence at Columbine and April of 2023, when their writing of the play began. Asked why they chose this particular subject, Seth responded:
As high school students we often don’t get a chance to share our voice but I think this is a topic that affects high school and college students the most and it’s our opinions that should be taken into consideration when deciding what to do. . . It is a way for us to tell the world how much this affects not just the people who lose their lives or who lose a loved one in a school shooting but that this affects all of us every day. This play intends to help us towards the goal of a nation and a world where this becomes a problem of the past.
Arlo added:
We had a platform to share the voice of not just us but thousands of students across the nation. I hope that people take this show as a genuine plea for action.
They’ve been working on the production for over a year, beginning with research that included reading books and watching videos, reviewing interviews with over 50 individuals who had personal connections to school shootings. They sought out Jodi Picoult, renowned author and Upper Valley resident (who has authored 19 Minutes, a novel about a school shooting) and “asked her for advice on how to create an engaging and appropriate show while dealing with this difficult to discuss topic.” They requested community feedback on rough drafts of the script and in December, 2023, held a staged reading for an audience of thirty viewers who offered their critiques.
And now, after over a year’s worth of work, 377 is coming to the stage. Shows are June 28 at 7:00 pm, June 29th at 2:00 and 7:00 pm, and June 30th at 1:00 pm, at Briggs Opera House in White River Junction, VT. Tickets are by donation at the door.
(Photos courtesy of Sarlo Theatre Productions.)
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.