Healdsburg play tells survivors’ stories of school shootings

Does it sometimes seem that shootings at schools have become, tragically, more commonplace in recent years?

Steven Martin, artistic director of the Raven Players in Healdsburg, doesn’t want us to get so used to the idea that we stop feeling the pain of it. That’s why he’s premiering the new play “If I Don’t Make It, I Love You,” opening Friday, March 24.

“Why does it keep happening?” Martin pondered. “How can we not stop it from happening? I want people to be uncomfortable about this.”

Consider these statistics collected by Sandy Hook Promise, a national nonprofit organization based in Newtown, Connecticut, founded and led by several family members whose loved ones were killed in the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012: Since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, more than 338,000 students in the U.S. have experienced gun violence at school. There were 46 school shootings in 2022, more than in any year since the Columbine shootings.

In Sonoma County, the fatal stabbing March 1 of a student by another student at Montgomery High School in Santa Rosa, although not a shooting, has heightened concerns about student safety at schools.

It’s not just a matter of how many are killed. We’re sadly used to reading obituaries of shooting victims and attempts to analyze the motives of the shooters.

But “If I Don’t Make It” is devoted to the survivors who struggle with the loss of loved ones and with their own wounds, physical and emotional.

“We’re not recreating the shootings themselves. We’re just trying to put the audience in the shoes of the people who were there,” Martin said. “It’s truly important to be part of the healing process and a feeling of community. We’re a community theater.”

The new play is based on the book “If I Don’t Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings,” published in 2019. It’s a collection of more than 60 first-person narratives from survivors of shootings in America over more than 50 years.

The book takes its title from a text sent by a 15-year-old girl to her mother as she hid in a closet at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, during the mass shooting there in 2018.

“There is a ripple effect of the shootings that goes out across the community, and that also brings the trauma associated with it — the fear that it could happen here,” said Loren Kleinman of Sparta, New Jersey. Kleinman co-edited the book with Amye Archer, working from survivors’ accounts of their experiences.

The book is too large to bring to the stage in its entirety, so Martin initiated a stage adaptation.

“I picked 10 of the stories and hired writers to adapt them,” he said. “And I cast 13 actors.”

The pieces will be presented in two different programs performed on separate nights, with a couple pieces featured in both programs.

Sunday matinee performances will be followed by a discussion session with the cast and crew of the play.

Martin concedes that the audiences attracted to the show already will be sympathetic to shooting survivors. But he feels it’s important not to become complacent.

“People may say, ‘You’re preaching to the choir,’” he said. “But the choir still needs to be preached to.”

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5243. On Twitter @danarts.