Teens wrote plays about gun violence — now they are being staged around the U.S.

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/13/ [login to see] /gun-violence-teens-theater
American high school students, who were born after the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999, are grimly accustomed to shooting drills and regular, if not daily, reports of gun violence on the news.

It was the 2018 school shooting at Parkland, Fla., that helped catalyze Enough! Plays to End Gun Violence. The yearly contest encourages young people to write plays addressing how ongoing shootings affect American lives. But founder Michael Cotey spent most of his professional life as a theater geek, not an activist.

"We're kind of always in a state of being bruised and battered," he told NPR during a run-through at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. "Sandy Hook happened. I'm in rehearsal for a play. The Las Vegas shooting happened. I'm in rehearsal for a play. Parkland happened. I'm in rehearsal for a play. And the same thing happened each time. All of us got really upset and incensed about it. Then we went on to making plays and making theater and going about our normal life."