NEW YORK — Teenagers in communities across the country all took to the stage at the same time Monday to amplify the push to end gun violence.
CBS New York captured the performance in New York City.
A call to end gun violence took center stage at Baruch Performing Arts Center.
“Theater has always been one of the greatest tools to get a message across,” said Noah Augustin, a senior at Civic Leadership Academy.
The group of teenagers is performing six plays written by six young writers in what’s called “Enough! Plays to End Gun Violence.”
“I play the parent of a trans woman who was murdered at a gay bar. We can assume it was a hate crime,” Queens College sophomore Khadija Alami Hassani said.
Each play looks at gun violence through a different lens.
“My role is Lay, a young girl of color who has been shot in a shootout at a playground when she was about 8 years old, and she comes back and talks to the police officer who is about to shoot her brother,” said Rosabella Procario-Soler, a senior at Professional Performing Arts School. “We grow up in New York City. We are around so much violence, especially gun violence, it’s really important to tell the story of stopping before a tragedy and kind of questioning the different paths someone can take.”
It’s all part of a nationwide effort to spark critical conversations.
The performance by young people in the Creative Arts Team Youth Theater was one of more than 50 around the country on Monday night.
“That is such an amplification of those six voices and young people being able to give them a platform to say, ‘Listen to us. This is our futures and gun violence are cutting them short,’” program director Helen White said.
And before walking into the theater, audience members were met with portraits of children lost to gun violence in “Faces Not Forgotten,” amplifying the need for change.
“This is the arts community saying a prayer that this stops that we stop losing people to gun violence, that we stop losing children to gun violence and those of us in the arts can only express that the way we know how, which is through performance,” said Howard Sherman, managing director of Baruch Performing Arts Center.
All proceeds collected from ticket sales will go to Neighbors in Action’s Save Our Streets, to help tackle gun violence in the city.
Social workers were present at the performance, so if anyone was feeling overwhelmed by the content they had someone to talk to.
