While a stage production of the 1999 shootings that killed 13 people at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colo., may be a bit too fresh for a direct retelling, a stylized version of the massacre that also examines high school stereotypes might have something to teach.
Garry Posey, founding partner of the Ensemble Theatre of Chattanooga, which is presenting “columbinus” tonight, Sunday and the next two weekends, hopes that is the case.
“I’m not trying to excuse their actions,” he said, noting the two gunmen, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris left recordings and journals taking responsibility for what they did.
However, he said, sometimes school personnel get bogged down in academics, grades and other issues and forget about people’s feelings. Students, he said, sometimes fall through the cracks.
The production, by the U.S. Theatre Project, is two acts of almost two different play, Posey said.