Coming to grips with that responsibility was hard. Theater Director Mary Leonard describes that first rehearsal as “a horrific dirge.” She went home that night wondering if she had made a mistake in choosing this script. Was the death of young children too much for her cast to handle emotionally? Can the aftermath of violence be portrayed? Did it create too much fear about a shooter coming to UWL? “Doing this play makes you think and worry about it more,” says Leonard. “I didn’t want to bring students down a path that is not healthy or good for them.”
But Leonard says her students have always been hungry for knowledge and experiences that push them out of their comfort zone. And this production would be that. “This kind of work doesn’t always come their way. It is new, thoughtprovoking and important,” she says. “If we don’t face our fears, sometimes we’ll never grow and learn. We’ll just stay.”
FINDING THEIR WAY TO NEWTOWN From the second rehearsal on, Leonard and her students were committed to honoring those voices from the small
community in central Connecticut. The Playwright Eric Ulloa had traveled to town six months after the shooting and asked people how they were dealing with the aftermath of the tragedy. He didn’t expect many people to talk to him, but more than 60 eventually did. The voices of shopkeepers, city council members, town workers, and parents of students who had survived were documented in thousands of pages of transcripts and then pieced together like a puzzle. Overwhelmingly, their message was one of hope. “This town refused to be defined by this horrible act of violence,” says Joe
The cast of UWL Department of Theatre Arts production of the world premiere of “26 Pebbles.”
6 UWL CAPSTONE Spring 2017
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