Calarts School of Theater 2023 - 2024 Season

“Bobbie Clearly” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc. www.concordtheatricals.com

New York Premiere Produced by Roundabout Theatre Company as part of the Roundabout Underground at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre on April 3, 2018.

First produced in September 2016 by Steep Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois.

Director’s Notes:

TEN YEARS ON AND COLUMBINE STILL FEELS THE PAIN
The Guardian, 4/11/2009 | Columbine

“A decade on, and talk of ‘closure, and ‘getting over it’ is anathema to these people. Yes, they survived. But survival was not a question of forgetting: it was choosing how best to live with remembering…

“For the last 10 years Ted has not wanted to talk publicly about what happened. He found it too painful. Most of the media attention was focused on those who were killed, or on the few families who spoke out. ‘It has taken 10 years for different perspectives of that day to be heard,’ says Katherine. ‘There were layers of people – the children who were injured, the families, the Swat teams, the pastors, the counsellors. It was a ripple effect. You don’t come out of a situation like that and not be deeply affected… 

“‘You never get over it,’ Ted concludes. ‘You can’t. It is how you deal with it that defines you.’”

AFTER NEWTOWN – Episode: “Gone Boy”
PBS, 2/22/2013 | Bard’s College at Simon’s Rock

MARIA HINOJOSA: When Gibson’s book came out in 1999 – the same year twelve students and a teacher were killed at Columbine — Gibson received a letter from from Wayne Lo, who’d read his book… and an unlikely correspondence between the two began.

Most people would say, “You want to be in contact with the man who took your son away?”

GREG GIBSON: Yeah. That’s a little odd, isn’t it? I think my family feels that way. It’s, “what’s going on with him?”

MARIA: They don’t want to-

GREG: No. Who would? Well, I would for some reason. I don’t know why

MARIA: Wayne Lo apologized for taking your son.

GREG: Yeah.

MARIA: You accept that apology?

GREG: I don’t know what else I can do. Do I forgive him? I- I don’t know what that means. I don’t want to kill him back. But he’s sure not my buddy. I’m not hanging out with him. We have this language for coming to terms with and forgiving. We’ve got it all kind of laid down like this. And I just always thought that was- if it were that easy, if it were that simple, how lovely that would be. But I have not found it that simple at all. I found it complicated and-and again, as many ways to do it as there are people. So, in some weird way this conversation I’ve got with the man who murdered my son is a way that I can try to understand, you know, what happened, how I should go about this.