A staged reading, part of a nationwide weekend of theater activism against gun violence
A WSC Avant Bard production at 1st Stage
Monday, April 23, 2018, 7:30 pm
Natural Shocks
A new play by Lauren Gunderson
Starring Sara Barker
Directed by Stevie Zimmerman
Stage Manager: Laura Schlachtmeyer
1524 Spring Hill Rd, McLean, VA 22102 (for driving and Metro directions, click here)
For more information, email boxoffice@avantbard.org or call 703-418-4808.
About the event:
Lauren Gunderson has made her new play Natural Shocks available royalty-free for local readings in order to raise money to address gun violence the weekend of April 20, 2018—the 19th anniversary of Columbine and the day of the National School Walkout.
Contributions collected at Avant Bard’s April 23 reading of Lauren Gunderson’s Natural Shocks at 1st Stage will go to support Moms Demand Action.
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a 501(c)4 and part of Everytown for Gun Safety, was formed to demand common sense gun laws from our legislators and businesses. This nonpartisan grassroots movement has grown to include a chapter in every state across the country. Moms Demand Action educates, motivates, and mobilizes supporters to take action that will result in stronger laws and policies to save lives.
Your online donation right now to Moms Demand Action will help create an America free from everyday gun violence. To give, click on the state chapter of your choice: Virginia Washington, DC Maryland
If you can’t make Avant Bard’s reading April 23, check out Tonic Theater Company’s reading of Natural Shocks featuring Lise Bruneau and directed by Kelsey D. Phelps Friday, April 20, 2018, at 2:00 pm at The Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, 1101 6th St SW, Washington, DC 20024.
About the play
Natural Shocks is a 65-minute, one-woman play that bursts to life when we meet a woman waiting out an imminent tornado in her basement. She reveals a final secret that puts the reality of guns in America front and center. The play is part confessional, part standup, and part reckoning. The reading will feature Sara Barker, recently acclaimed for her performance in Avant Bard’s production of Gunderson’s play Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight.
Excerpt
SHE: So yeah: door locked, window closed, stay away from the window, bunch of blankets down here somewhere, bottled water for sure, gun in the closet, I’m re-reading Sense and Sensibility so that’s in here in case I get bored, (bored in a tornado, Jesus), there’s a – what’s this? Oh of course: a really old copy of Field & Stream because he won’t throw anything away because we’re definitely going to need to reference an article about duck calls from 2001.
Y’all got wigged out when I said there’s a gun in here didn’t you.
You’re not those kinda people are you? I get that. I respect that. I don’t really like guns myself, but I grew up around them and you gotta be able to protect yourself. This is a messed up world. I have a right to a gun, you have a right to think I’m nuts. That’s all we need it say about it.
(Pause)
It’s in the closet. There’s a safe under my boots. It’s not gonna bite you.
Though I should definitely make sure it’s not going to go off if a goddamned tornado hits this house. That’s all I need. A pistol in a tornado.
Hear Lauren talk about…
…her commitment to ending gun violence and how theater can be used as a means of social change.
A note from Lauren
I was a junior in high school when Columbine happened in 1999 and it spurred me into activism instantly. I wrote an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution shaming the NRA and their spokesman Charlton Heston, who were holding their annual conference only an hour away from that mourning community. I organized a student protest at the GA statehouse; I went to Washington to speak to my Senators. I was berated by our local conservative radio talk shows: called ignorant, naive, and unAmerican. I was 17, a teenager like all those amazing kids in Parkland who are taking up the cause of their lost classmates and making the biggest difference in this issue I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Nineteen years later here we are, another school shooting, but finally a freshly invigorated and seemingly unstoppable movement brewing. I happened to be working on a new one-woman play based a bit on Hamlet—called Natural Shocks—about a quirky, chatty woman with a dark truth she needs to share. I was just starting to send it out to trusted colleagues when the Parkland school shooting happened. And I saw how brave and tireless and convincing these kids were in saying “no more gun violence.” And then I read that the most vocal of them were theatre kids.
So instead of closing my eyes and thinking back to being a junior and watching the news in horror curing my AP US History class and thinking those poor mothers and please god someone do something about this… I posted a query on facebook asking for help with this play in the wake of this new violence. My friend and fellow theatre activist Christina Wallace reached out immediately, read the piece, and said “Let’s do this.”
So now the play is yours. Whoever you are. On April 20th, read it, experience it, use it to raise money for Everytown or Mom’s Demand Action. Use it to start conversations, to build networks of support, to gather people and give them some place to go to congregate and say enough.
Of course, to contradict Hamlet, the play is not the thing. You are. Your community, your company, yourself. Any play is just the metal that attracts the lightning. We are the lightning – actor, artistic team, audience, community. We are the undeniable force of nature that will light up this darkness and change it forever.
On April 20th, whether you can produce a reading, attend an event, march with the National Walk Out protest, or donate in any way…
Let’s do this.
Lauren
About the performer
Sara Barker has worked with Avant Bard on Emilie: La Marquise duChâtelet Defends Her Life Tonight (Emilie), King Lear (Edgar), Othello (Desdemona), Orlando (Orlando), Mary Stuart (Elizabeth), Six Characters in Search of an Author (Stepdaughter), The House of Yes (Jackie-O), The Cherry Orchard (Varya), The Mistorical Hystery of Henry (I)V (Hotspur), Lulu (Lulu), and The Miser (La Fleece). Credits also include Factory 449’s 448 Psychosis and Closet Land, Rorschach’s A Maze (Oksana), Scena’s The Importance of Being Earnest (Algernon). NYC credits include The Brick’s King Lear (King Lear), Hipgnosis Theatre’s The Winter’s Tale (Paulina), and various devised works with directors Lear DeBessonet and Josh Fox. Sara is a graduate of St. John’s College and a company member with Avant Bard, Factory 449, Rorschach Theatre, and The Klunch. www.sarabarker.com/acting
About the playwright
Lauren Gunderson is the most produced living playwright in America of 2016, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award and the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and John Gassner Award for Playwriting, and a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s 3-Year Residency with Marin Theatre Company. She studied Southern Literature and Drama at Emory University, and Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School, where she was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. Her work has been commissioned, produced, and developed at companies across the U.S. including South Coast Rep (Emilie, Silent Sky), The Kennedy Center (The Amazing Adventures of Dr. Wonderful and Her Dog!), The O’Neill, The Denver Center, San Francisco Playhouse, Marin Theatre, Synchronicity, Olney Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Shotgun Players, TheatreWorks, Crowded Fire, and more. Her work is published at Playscripts (I and You, Exit Pursued By A Bear, The Taming, and Toil And Trouble), Dramatists (Silent Sky, Bauer, Miss Bennet), and Samuel French (Emilie).
A clickable map of the national weekend of theater activism against gun violence
Produced by special arrangement with THE GERSH AGENCY
41 Madison Avenue, 33rd Floor, New York, NY 10010
Any inquiries for the Play shall be sent to Leah Hamos, The Gersh Agency, lhamos@gersh.com.
