Details

At the Broken Places follows the teachers and students of fictional Sierra High School as they write and stage an account of the fatal massacre that occurred at their school twenty years earlier, hoping finally to destigmatize a school that has for so long been synonymous with violence. The cast is multi-generational: a father funds the production with damages awarded from the gun company that armed his son's murderers; Sierra's principal must face the anger of a furious suburban evangelical community, and a drama teacher agrees to stage the tragedy. The school's production is complicated by Sierra students who witnessed the attack and now have children of their own acting in the show. The student actors, playing the murderers and murdered - 'monsters' and 'martyrs' - struggle to perform to a community desperate for closure yet awash in intractable guilt and unabated grief. The play draws inspiration from the aftermath of the shootings at Columbine High School, an event Horton experienced as a student at a nearby high school in Littleton, Colorado.

Creatives/Company

Author: Joseph Horton