Screen 9 – The Pleasance Theatre
Making any artistic project that deals with someone’s lived experience is a challenging endeavour, especially when it touches upon trauma and hurt that one continues to live with every single day. Between remaining true to the testimonies that drive the story and holding a safe space for an audience to explore the subject area, it calls for a dramaturgy of care and empathy. Piccolo Theatre’s new verbatim show Screen 9 succeeds in doing precisely that. Based on the 2012 mass shooting incident that occurred in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado, the show uses the real-life testimonies and interviews of survivors to reconstruct the gruesome July night which left 12 dead and over 70 injured. Focusing on the life of these survivors in the years since the shooting and their attempts to deal wit...