Last year, The LAB! Theatre gave its first season-long commission to a UNC student — and the recipient Gage Tarlton will have his play “lockdown.” premiere as a staged reading from March 23 to 25.
The story of "lockdown." takes place two years in the future where people have become desensitized to school shootings and tragedy.
“The relative nonchalance of the characters is an observation about our trajectory toward complete numbness, toward children being frequently massacred,” said Adair Tompkins, who will be acting in the role of Rowan during the staged reading.
During the play, high school theatre students are forced to confront their fears and unite together when a nearby school shooting occurs, placing them into a "Code Yellow: lockdown."
“I didn’t set out to write it like a school shooting play," Tarlton said. "I just set out to write it as a story about high school kids that are put in a really serious situation and how they react to that situation.”
Tarlton said when he brought the idea of the play to LAB! Theatre company, it originally was about a college newsroom like The Daily Tar Heel talking about a conservative statue like Silent Sam. With each draft Tarlton made, the story changed into something different.
“I was thinking of what I could do and how I could contribute to the conversation around gun violence, around gun control, around these school shootings that kept happening,” Tarlton said.
Tarlton’s research for writing the play included reading news articles surrounding the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, looking up information about the March for Our Lives student demonstration, his own experiences and talking with his sister who is still in high school.
“When I was in high school three years ago I never really thought about the possibility of a shooting occurring when I would go to school every day — and she kind of was saying ‘I have to think about that every morning,'" Tarlton said. "'Every morning that our mom drops us off, that’s on my mind.'”
