Last week at Yerger Middle school, a hard working and talented group of students recently acted out a school shooting as part of a play which is scheduled to go on tour next year. The title of the play is “Out of Hope” .
“ Out of Hope,” a title chosen for two reasons, opens with a school shooting that leaves six dead and six wounded. The students are left feeling discouraged and hopeless after the horrible event, one reason for the title. The second reason, is the student actresses and actors will be traveling across Arkansas on tour to various performing arts centers giving the performance....coming out of Hope.
Video scenes will be incorporated into the play, thus one reason for acting out the shooting before hand, to get as much footage as possible, according to SW Arts Council Director Repha Buckman. The Hope Public Schools Crisis Team, the Hope Police Department, the Hempstead County Sheriff's Department, Pafford EMS and the Hope Fire Department assisted in the re-enactment.
The students acted out the scene where the audience will hear the guns and the screams, but when the scene is actually performed on stage, the students will see newspaper headlines from all over the United States over the last 10 years.
“ It is a large number of headlines, with the last being the Yergerr Middle School shooting,” Buckman said.
The shooting reenactment will be used several places in the play, not just for shock value, Buckman said, but because people have seen so much violence they have became desensitized to it.
The hope is, according to Buckman, for the audience to tie the “real violence to real students” and have a heightened empathy. The second scene of the play involves students returning to school and discussing the life-shattering event.
The play is being created by the Southwest Arts Council and the Hope Public Schools 21st Century Learning Center Program Intervention. Many students involved are also part of the Hope Drum Ballet. Music and songs will also be incorporated into the play. Students recently had songwriter Nathan Meckel, who has work featured on several known television networks, help the students write music for the play. The students already had working titles to the songs they wanted, according to Meckel.
Eighty-seven students have been involved in creating the three-act play, along with Buckman working as an Artist in Education playwright, Dr. Linda Clark, Earlene Gulley and Warren Lampe.
