Posted on 11/04/2014 6:03:38 AM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
I was shocked to read the news that Nathaniel Sam Shapiro’s play “The Erlkings,” written from the perspective of the two Columbine HS killers, is set to open off Broadway at the Beckett Theatre this month.
I heard he’d written the play several years ago, but thought it was too appalling to ever make it to the stage, let alone to the nation’s leading theater district.
On April 20, 1999, the Columbine killers shot and killed my father, Dave, and 12 innocent students.
I acknowledge — and would even go so far as to say admire — the playwright’s aim to try to understand the killers’ psychological states and to educate his audience about what may have driven them to their shooting rampage.
After all, the killings have shaped my own work: I’m now a forensic therapist, offering counseling and education, especially to violent offenders and the mentally ill to help them find better ways of coping with their emotions and to reduce the violence in our society.
I’m honoring my dad by providing a message of caring, compassion and hope to those convicted of violent crimes.
But staging a play from the killers’ perspectives is certainly not the way to reduce our nation’s gun-violence epidemic.
For one, if Shapiro sought to write a play to raise awareness about America’s pervasive gun violence, he should have started by omitting the killers’ identities, stripping them of the fame and notoriety they so desperately sought — the same notoriety that so many gunmen before and after Columbine wished to attain.
(snip)
This play will sadly only perpetuate our culture of violence and feed into society’s larger fears about mass shootings.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I appreciate the author’s pain.
I don’t know anything about this play. But, if we are to stop being creative because someone’s feelings might be hurt we are going to be a pretty boring society.
The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to protect those things that make us uneasy.
If the play sucks, it will close.
That, and “Klinghoffer” down the street at the Met.
Opera and Broadway ain’t what they used to be!
surely this is satire...
Classical gas dept: Franz Schubert’s “The Erlking” was about a father on horseback clutching his desperately ill son as he rides through the night seeking medical help.
A spirit from the underworld (Erlking) appears to the child & begins cajoling him into leaving this life. The drama goes back & forth until the father & horse arrive at a doctor’s cottage. But meanwhile, the boy has died.
Why the playwright chose to call these murderous little b@stards at Columbine “The Erlkings” is beyond me. He is giving them undeserved notoriety & significance.
It will close on the fourth day and didappear into the mists of bad theatre.
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