Shelby is a young woman who a short time ago was living her normal life to the fullest. It is her senior year of high school and she is preparing for her role of Gertrude in “Hamlet.” She’s a theatre kid. She sees theatre as her safe space, a place where everyone is accepted and appreciated for who they are. So much so that she considers her theatre group her family. It is moments in our lives when we are not even thinking that in a moment’s notice everything can change, and it did. When one of the other theatre students shares his love for another and it is not a mutual feeling. Justin disconnects from reality. He obsesses over the love he has for Cynthia so much so that he brings a gun to school- into their theatre class. Shelby recounts everything that leads up to the mass shooting as well as her time after. The recovery. The guilt of being alive while juggling the hate she has for Justin and the anger that she can’t shake. Shelby’s life is very different now. After being shot in the face she lost her hearing and had to learn how to do so many things over again. Learning to swallow the right way and all things after were a challenge that she overcome. Learning sign language is now what she spends a lot of her time focusing on, a step forward so she can own her life again, a piece she had lost in her theatre class that day. A story of a strong person, fighting the most difficult fight of her life, figuring out how to live again when surrounded by death.
(*The performer can be anyone, but they will need to do some basic sign language.)
