society .” And at the end , “ Shout : My sister in Kandahar / Is my nephew in Aurora / Whisper : My future husband in Columbine / Will be my lover one day in Gaza / The gun killed them / The same gun .”
The plays resonated deeply with audiences . When I asked Svich about the reactions of audience members to the plays , she said the responses were quite varied , revealing the anger , sadness , and despair that accurately reflects the complicated feelings around this issue . Following the initial action in Washington , D . C ., NoPassport staged actions in New York City , Los Angeles , Seattle , Chicago , Sydney , and more .
Most recently , she and Kline launched
AFTER ORLANDO : An International Theatre Action in response to the June 2016 mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando , Florida . Both the After Orlando Theatre Action and the Gun Control Theatre Action continue to bring the work of the artists and these important conversations to audiences all over the world .
And perhaps , too , this is a welcomed consequence to the art . To remember .
For Svich the end game is not necessarily about changing laws — she knows how hard it is to do that . For her , the theatre community is a generous space where artists can come together and create art that responds to the issues that are most important to human beings . “ Art is empathy ,” she tells me . “ But it ’ s also important that it provokes , too . The theatre lives somewhere between the church and the brothel .”
Svich believes the theatre is able to uniquely reflect the fragility of human life and allow us to “ tend and attend ” to one another in all of our vulnerability and frailty . She hopes her work will provide an alternative narrative to the debate — using stories to provide understanding and ultimately , change .
Bureen Ruffin is a writer and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of English at Pace University . She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from the New School . She was born in New York City to Haitian parents . She is currently working on a memoir .
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