For one night only, 2nd Story Theater takes on gun control
The husband and wife team of Jack Messenger and Lois Bourgon offer “Thoughts and Prayers,” a play about gun control, at 2nd Story Theatre.
The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov is reputed to have advised his fellow dramatists, “One must never place a loaded rifle on stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.” At Hermosa Beach’s 2nd Story Theatre Monday night, firearms will be prominently displayed, but the more damaging weapon may be the conversation.
Monday marks the one-night-only stage reading of “Thoughts and Prayers,” a new play from South Bay resident Jack Messenger. Messenger stars as fictional Rep. Abraham Griffin, a conservative eight-term congressman who is pulled in both directions by the deeply opposed factions of the gun control debate.
Messenger said that he became inspired to write the play following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in which Adam Lanza killed 20 students, six staff members, and his mother before taking his own life. Messenger recalled feeling that this, surely, would be the moment at which more aggressive gun control legislation would pass, only to be disappointed when no bill emerged from Congress.
“I thought for sure this crazy country would finally do something,” he said.
In the years since more and more mass shootings transfixed the country but have failed to prompt federal action on gun control. Cast members say that “Thoughts and Prayers” feels timely, particularly because of the reaction generated by this year’s Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting in Parkland, Fla. The following month produced mass protests around the country, including a “March for Our Lives” in the South Bay, in which thousands of people marched along The Strand from Manhattan Beach to Hermosa Beach.
Whitney Anderson is a Hermosa resident who plays Danielle, spokesperson for the NRA. Anderson, who is currently putting on a well-received Hollywood staging of the play “Extremities,” which revolves around an attempted rape, said that theater was the perfect medium to tackle current topics.
“Plays really allow people to be touched. They’re in the dark for a reason: so that people feel safe to expose their own vulnerability. That makes them a great vehicle for socially conscious messages,” Anderson said.
Messenger is a veteran of South Bay theater. He and his wife Lois Bourgon have put on plays throughout the region, including a run of Lisa Loomer’s “Distracted” at the 2nd Story Theater earlier this year. He said he approaches the issue of gun control differently than most, because of his background.
Though his parents were American, he was born in Canada and grew up in England, where he attended boarding school. He learned about his parent’s home country mostly through television and movies, in which he noticed a disproportionate amount of violence. And many of his schoolmates were perplexed at the country’s obsession with guns, an attitude he carried with him when he returned to the country.
Messenger acknowledges that his perspective has given the play the tone of a polemic, and there is no question where he stands on the issue: all proceeds from the evening will be donated to Women Against Gun Violence.
But Angie Light, who plays Griffin’s daughter Lorraine, said that she was drawn to the fact that the Griffin character is a conservative. Like Anderson, Light saw theater as a means for changing hearts and minds. She recalled studying at Second City improv, where her instructors encouraged students to read the news to have things to talk about. It’s the hope of the cast that the play can start a productive conversation.
“I’m glad that he wrote it that way, instead of being this bleeding heart liberal. Because then we’re just talking into a vacuum,” Light said.
“Thoughts and Prayers” opens for one night only on Aug. 20 at the 2nd Story Theatre in the Hermosa Beach Community Center at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20, and all proceeds go to Women Against Gun Violence.