AURORA | It started with a few simple words, words that had changed with the charge of violence and tragedy.
In the weeks and months after July 20, they were words that helped reform Stacey D’Angelo’s plans for the fall semester at the Community College of Aurora. They made D’Angelo, the college’s theater director, rethink how she would approach her craft and communicate with her students. As the toll of the shootings at the Century Aurora 16 theater became clear, they turned into words with the potential to heal a battered community.
“A couple of months ago, if you heard the words ‘theater’ and ‘Aurora,’ your mind would go one place,” said D’Angelo, who had originally planned to stage an original production about military veterans. “I immediately said I can’t do a piece about war and post-traumatic stress disorder … I felt charged to do something, I felt that this department (was) called to do something.”
“Glimpses – The Rising Dawn” is a bid to reclaim those words by D’Angelo and her students. The original stage production that will debut next week is a collective response to a community tragedy, a production that tackles deep-seated fears and wounds with candid expression and heartfelt confession. The idea for the show stemmed from the tragedy that claimed 12 lives and injured dozens, but its final form will touch on more universal themes.
“It’s not about the tragedy, it’s about healing,” said Aisha Spencer, a CCA drama student who wrote segments for the piece and who will star in the production. “It’s moments in our lives that have made us become a better person. It’s our fears, our dreams. It’s a way to show that we are strong as humans and we will find hope and strength no matter what.”
D’Angelo and the students took their cues for the show from a similar stage project from 2008, a production titled “Glimpses” that drew on personal, firsthand input and anecdotes from students. The show combined the firsthand stories in a single format, testimonials that touched on similar themes.
“When we did ‘Glimpses’ the first time, it was a community coming together, sharing their stories,”
D’Angelo said. “They took the directions of going to the depths of who we are and what we strive to be, what we’re confused about, what our fears are … It did for the community then what we really needed now.”
The format of this version features oblique references to the tragedy — flashing lights that simulate the strobe from a police car, single words recited by actors that recreate the chaos and confusion of those early morning hours on July 20. But the real content of the show boils down to personal monologues and stories loosely tied together, words culled from countless free write projects and firsthand work with the cast of nearly 20.
“We’re trying to heal the word ‘theater,’” said James Brunt, a CCA drama student whose past stage work was limited to short, one-act pieces. The format and freedom of the new version of “Glimpses” has been both demanding and liberating for Brunt, he said, but the show’s mission is unique. “Now, when people hear the word ‘theater,’ they think of shootings. We’re trying reclaim our theater. This is what we do. This is what we do for a living is put on a performance. We don’t people to be terrified of going to a simple play. We want to show them that it’s OK, that they can feel comfortable and show them that this is a community. We can heal together. We can still enjoy things.”
The final cast of 18 was narrowed down from a group of about 50 that initially responded to the audition notice, a call that encouraged students to “come share your stories” in 1-to-3 minute segments. Interested students arrived prepared with songs, poems and stories.
“My intention was to allow them to speak,” D’Angelo said. “I wanted to allow them to talk about whatever they needed to.”
The format is similar to the structure of “The Laramie Project,” the drama by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project that came as a reaction to the brutal murder of Andrew Shepard in 1998. According to Therese Jones, a director at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the Anschutz Medical Campus, the approach hearkens back to the ancient history of the art form.
“For the ancient Greeks, theater became this public and communal form. I think that something like ‘Glimpses’ works in that traditional form of theater,” said Jones, who studied the theater community’s response to the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s. “Theater has its basis in religious ceremony. For the people who attend ‘Glimpses,’ they will be a part of this communal ritual of healing.”
Plenty of the students had firsthand input regarding the fallout of the tragedy. Spencer and Brunt talk about the hours they spent following the news coverage, responding to texts and checking social media for word of their friends in those first hours after the shooting. They recall a recent visit to the Town Center at Aurora mall when a crowd seemed ready to flee at the sound of a balloon popping, a report that too many took for a gun shot.
Those experiences played into the creative process, they said.
“We had to strip down all of our barriers, all of the things that we kept masked or guarded in front of other people,” Spencer said. “It really was about if you had one thing to say to the universe, what would it be? What did you want to put out there?”
For Spencer, the response to those difficult questions went deeper than the events of the summer. The format of “Glimpses” served as a forum for a different kind of confession, an admission of suffering and struggle that she’d worked hard to keep from her peers. Spencer took the production as an opportunity to share her struggles with cancer. Spencer, who has lymphoma, took the show as a chance to speak about her struggle with mortality.
“The one thing that has always been the elephant in the room for me has been time. I deal with a moment where I’m facing time on my terms. I really show all of me in that moment. I think no one in this theater knew me before that,” Spencer said. “This is the side you never show to anyone else. I think all of our moments are the things we really don’t want to say, but you really need to say or else it just eats at you.”
That kind of catharsis is a central part of the production, D’Angelo said, an approach that seeks reinvention through pain and stark truths. Hopefully, that kind of brutal honesty will leave an imprint on audience members and the wider community.
“Maybe when they leave they’ll hear the words ‘theater’ and ‘Aurora’ and they’ll think of community and love and sharing and togetherness,” D’Angelo said. “They’ll not think about ugliness and fear and panic.”
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707
“Glimpses –
The Rising Dawn”Runs Nov. 8 through 17 at the Larry D. Carter Theatre at the Community College of Aurora’s CentreTech Campus, 16000 East Centretech Parkway in Aurora.
Tickets start at $10.
Information: ccaurora.edu/glimpses or 303-340-7529.