Questions That are Answers

by PJ Paparelli, Artistic Director of the United States Theatre Project Conceiver/Writer/Director of columbinus

LOOKING BACK AT THE GENESIS of columbinus, I feel a wave of deep emotion. Not necessarily nostalgia, but the complexities of the journey that my team took on its way to this world premiere at Round House Theatre. When we started almost three years ago, we knew we wanted to create something that would affect change in our audiences. But we never knew how much it would change us.

columbinus is the Latin word for "dove-like," or "peace-like." Not unlike a medical term, the clinical nature of its title suggests an examination or procedure. The piece is an examination that elicits a discussion. It is the same discussion that we started three years ago. At first, Sean McNall, Michael Milligan, Josh Barrett and I gave birth to the idea of a theatre collective that would dive deep into a community to find answers. The Columbine High School shootings were a massive topic. The event's epic nature at times made it feel unreal. We wanted our audiences to go away from the piece with a sense of clarity about the event, and with some answers to why two teenagers would walk into their high school and kill their classmates. As we researched and interviewed, we continually were left with more questions. We were also left with the frightening reality of the event. As our collaboration grew with Pat Hersch and Stephen Karam, our questions grew to the point that all we were left with were questions, That was frustrating, to say the least. How could countless hours and conversations with people prove farther away from a means to solving this riddle? I felt like we kept turning a Rubik's Cube, getting closer, but never arriving at an answer.

I remember my first trip to Littleton in the summer of 2002. A friend put me in touch with his high school teacher who still taught at Arapahoe High, the sister school to Columbine. I will never forget sitting in his classroom as he recounted the day, tears streaming down his face, asking the same questions I had asked. In the front seat of his pickup truck, we drove to Columbine. When you spend countless hours reading about a place and an event stuck in history, it becomes lodged in your memory as a fictional place ... because it truly only exists in your mind's eye. But as we came over the crest of the hill approaching the school, there it actually was: average and ordinary, yet frighteningly real. At that moment, the event in my mind became undeniably real, and I have never been the same since. The media could never convey how similar Columbine High School is to schools across the United States. It is like any school in any town, which made the events that occurred there even more frightening. We soon learned that its students were just the same. Unfortunately, bad things like this could happen anywhere, at any time.

It was during my third trip to Littleton that I made the "big" discovery. We were talking to teenagers at Arapahoe High School, when I started to feel something different. We had an afterschool discussion with a group of teenagers about their connection with their parents. For over an hour, I listened to these kids pour out their frustrations, confusions and observations about the adults around them. We all laughed, got silent, felt awkward, and really connected. I say "connected" because I was beginning to understand and feel how they were feeling. I needed answers to huge questions that only they could provide because they were the experts on their world. I was an adult who supposedly had answers to the journey into adulthood that they were about to take. But they never asked me for advice or help, nor did I say I was going to offer any. They just wanted to talk; in fact, I soon learned they needed to talk. Both of us needed each other, and it was fine that we didn't have the answers. It was the need for each other that made us feel less alone, less isolated, and, all of a sudden, less in need of an answer.

I think the success of this piece lies offstage both in the process of us getting to Round House Theatre and in the conversations that will take place long after the audience goes home. The answer we were looking for is simply in the discussion itself. Talk and listen, and expect nothing until hours, weeks, or even months later.

Lastly, there is Eric and Dylan, the two gunmen. I have spent more time trying to figure them out than doing anything else over the last three years. I can certainly say that I know more about them, but I can't say I understand them. I don't think I ever will. But I can say how important it was to attempt to understand them. Although I never felt I got anywhere, I was glad to learn as much as I could about them. I learned so much about human behavior, decision making, isolation, parenting, and countless other topics. How I wish I could have talked with them. I wish I could have listened to their bad jokes, heard their hateful rants, and somehow told them that there was a bigger world other than the small, short-sighted world they created for themselves. I wish I could have helped them direct their intelligence, determination and focus onto something else. But I can't -- they are dead, and their deed is done. But I will always want to do something. Again, I am left with a question: what can I do?

Almost three years after beginning this journey, I feel frustrated and determined. But that's good. It's stuck inside of me to never give up on a teenager. They need us as much as they reject us. They want to talk as much as they want to avoid us.

All of this may sound didactic; It may seem futile after years of trying. But I think that's okay. Trying is the point. Never giving up is the point. Teenagers are our future. They deserve all our focus and attention. They need our help. And we truly need them in order to fully understand ourselves.