Down the Trench hole

>> Dawson students explore their
post-school-shooting emotional fallout
in the multimedia show Alice in Oblivion

FROM JOURNALS TO WONDERLAND:
Student performers (above and bottom)

by MATTHEW HAYS
photos by WILL LEW

The auditorium at Dawson College is filled with the kind of giddy excitement one expects from a performance rehearsal. In less than two weeks, it’s showtime, and these 26 students will be acting, dancing and screening their work for their parents, peers and the public. On May 12, this group will unveil their collective creation, Alice in Oblivion.

But when audiences sit through the show, they may be surprised; this is no typical end-of-year student production. With Alice in Oblivion, Dawson students have taken their emotional reactions to the school shooting of September 13—in which Kimveer “Trench” Gill entered Dawson, killed one student, injured 19 others and then committed suicide—and put them on the stage in a complex multimedia show. And though this staging of the Lewis Carroll 1865 classic will be seen entirely through the prism of the school shooting fallout, in fact, the show was already in development prior to Sept 13.

“I had always wanted to do Alice in Wonderland with the students,” explains Will Aitken, the Dawson instructor overseeing the 26 pupils in this seminar. “We knew it was going to be our production for this year. Then the shootings happened, and that changed everything. But it seemed that the students could work with the show, and attach their own ideas about what had happened to it.”

Initially, the students had mixed responses to the concept of blending Alice and a school shooting that hit so close to home. “We decided to mix the ideas,” says 19-year-old A.J. Korkidakis. “At first, it seemed a bit weird. But after the first class, we started to talk about ideas and it began to make sense. In fact, it fits perfectly because it’s about a weird world where nothing seems to make sense anymore. We were thrown into this weird world, where everything was suddenly unfamiliar—in a sense, it was precisely what happened to us.”

Aitken had the students write journals, in which they detailed their feelings about what had occurred. As well, the text of the show was broken down into scenes, with smaller groups of students examining their own scene and coming up with ideas that would hinge the classic book to the contemporary phenomenon.

The result is an exhilarating, unnerving gaze into the collective mindset of 26 young people struggling to make sense of a school shooting, their own emotional response to it and various authority figures trying to make nice in the wake of the nastiness. Alice in Oblivion incorporates short films, dramatic vignettes and even a break-dancing sequence, in which dancers spin while wearing bunny ears and tails. The splintered narrative, which bombards the audience with ideas, interweaving storylines and various media, shifts between serious moments and the comedic. And this, as the students will tell you, is precisely the point. It’s not easy to get over something like a school shooting. Alice in Oblivion embraces the confusion honestly and without apology. Says Korkidakis, “We had a lot of mixed emotions when we came back. That’s reflected in different parts of the show: some of it is scary, some of it is funny.”

The pupils in this group recall returning to Dawson to find a school swamped with well-meaning psychologists and counsellors, all of whom had various bits of pat, simplistic, Dr. Phil-speak advice on how to cope. “Everywhere you went, they seemed to be there,” says Korkidakis. “And then they’d hug you.”

“I’m someone who doesn’t really believe that things can be explained by one textbook,” says Rob Myerson, 19. “Everyone is different, and that wasn’t really reflected in the kind of talks we were receiving.”

This post-shooting presence at Dawson finds its way into Alice in Oblivion in an ingenious way. The students lifted the text, verbatim, from one psychologist’s Power Point presentation, titled “When Terrible Things Happen.” In a scathing parody, the list of good and bad coping methods are read by one of the student performers, drenched in irony. As the other parts of Alice in Oblivion clearly indicate, sadly, the students did indulge in some bad coping methods in the wake of the attack, including drugs and sex, no-nos on the list. One short film depicts a number of students puffing on some drugs in an apparent effort to smoke their woes away. Then there are depictions of Alice drinking, a whorehouse visit and even a date rape at a rave. Ultimately, Alice is put on trial, charged with “improper psychological recovery.”

But the most caustic part of the show arrives when (surprise!) the behaviour of members of the mainstream media is addressed. Students say that Dawson was under siege by reporters eager to stick a camera and microphone in someone’s face, preferably when they were crying, and at times, this behaviour compounded the trauma. “They were literally chasing people who were in tears,” recalls Korkidakis. “At one point, there were so many reporters, me and my friends starting taking pictures of the people who were taking pictures. They didn’t like it at all and told us to stop.”

But this group has managed revenge through parody: one short film is a faux newscast, in which superficial journalists trade idiotic banter while covering some “breaking news.” The journos stumble all over one another trying to get reaction. Finally, one student is so tired of being hounded by a reporter, he turns to them and tells them to “Fuck off!” (This production also abstains from any speculation about the mindset or motives of Gill himself.)

But the students were given yet another jolt during the rehearsal process, when news of the Virginia massacre would break—a school shooting that now stands as the most deadly in U.S. history. “The Virginia shooting brought up a lot for us,” acknowledges Myerson. “It was hard to know how to respond after that happened.”

And their shared revulsion for the post-school shooting media frenzies shaped part of Alice in Oblivion too. “At times, during the creative process, some suggested that we depict part of the shooting,” says Charmaine Ciano, 19. “But it was too harsh. We felt that it was a good step forward to focus on how people coped after, not the extremity of the actual attack. The show is not over-the-top, it’s not gruesome.”

Ciano adds that the experience of creating Alice in Oblivion has helped all 26 students come to terms with the Dawson shooting. “What surprised me is that so many of us were experiencing the same things. It seemed like when someone came up with an idea, it would strike a nerve with the rest of us. There was surprisingly little disagreement.”

“I think that, more or less, everyone had the same emotions,” argues Myerson. “What struck me was how many different ways there were that people were coping. Different students have been brought up in different ways and situations, and that seemed to impact how individuals dealt with their emotions.”

“After the shooting occurred, I was surprised at how little reaction I seemed to be having,” says Korkidakis. “But doing this production has allowed me to really think about what happened, and I got a lot out of it. It’s only now that I realize the extent of my reaction to it all.”

“The show reflects the sheer chaos and absurdity of what happened,” says Myerson. “I think we could all relate to the chaos of a book like Alice. That’s pretty much what our world felt like after September 13. I mean, you hear about Columbine in the news, but you don’t expect it to happen at your school.”

Alice in Oblivion runs at Dawson College
(3040 Shebrooke W.) on saturday, May 12, 8 p.m.
and 10 p.m. Tickets and info: (514) 996-2497 or AliceInOblivion@gmail.com