“You can’t take a bullet back. That’s the first thing we need to realize in this hard conversation,” says performer and Pasadena resident Krysta Gonzales.
Gonzales plays a key role in “Arms Around America,” a title which may sound like a Hallmark Channel hug for the holidays. But this production is made of much sterner stuff than that and is far more urgent.
The upcoming world premiere opens next week at Westwood’s Nimoy Theater, presented by CAP UCLA . The multifaceted storytelling project, five years in the making, is dedicated to ending gun violence. “Arms Across America” was created by the Los Angeles-based theater troupe Dan Froot & Company.
DF & Co creates theater pieces, podcasts and community gatherings that foster dialogue around racism, poverty, firearms, and entwined social justice issues. “Arms Around America” is a community-based production staged as a live radio-theater broadcast, where Gonzales and three fellow actors voice dozens of characters based on actual first-person accounts of lives shaped by guns. Julio Montero grounds the production with his dynamic, Latine-inflected, avant-folk and rock musical score.
Working with choreographer, dancer and oral historian Tula B. Strong, Froot collected and adapted the six book-length oral histories of diverse families from Southern California, Southern Florida and Montana, which form the basis for the narrative, including the podcast versions that launched in June. These oral histories themselves will become available to the public free of charge later this year through UCLA Library’s Center for Oral History Research.
During this tumultuous election year, attitudes about the Second Amendment on both sides of the aisle reveal an undeniable truth: as a nation, Americans love their guns. More than one-third of US adults say they own a gun, including President Biden, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.
On Sunday morning, we shook off the Standard Time fallback and that annual, fun-size hangover of reclaimed Halloween candy to catch up with Gonzales on the fly. In addition to her performance chops, the El Paso, Texas native and former Groundling is also a writer, director and producer.
And she can shed skin in an instant. Counteracting the gravitas of the current project, her effervescent voice sparkles with the hopefulness of a Disney cartoon heroine as she explains, “I love this work so much because I get to play so many different characters. In (production characters) Rich and Dave’s segment where the brothers talk about living in the projects in Miami, I get to play a tiny baby girl, then a hardened mom who’s trying to protect her vulnerable child from harm.”
A powerfully intimate aspect of the live production is the “kitchen table” device, where curated, invited guests seated at a table observe the onstage action and then engage in an unscripted discussion when the lights come up. “We’re not interested in chastising anyone,” says Gonzales. “The issue of guns is often presented as very black or white, very either-or, right or wrong, them or us. But what we discover in these family stories is the unexpected nuance. One of our hopes is that our project will model how to have these really hard conversations when the stakes are high.”
As context, take a gander at the ABC News Year 2024 Gun Violence Tracker. As we go to press, we learn that guns caused 32,335 deaths and 60,694 injuries YTD in the US so far in 2024, with 292 deaths and 595 injuries reported during the week ending November 1.
America being the Wild West versus, say, the United Kingdom, where about one percent of the population owns a registered gun, there is much talk in these parts about good guys and bad guys regarding firearms.
Many Americans purchase guns fearing crime.
But the actual danger of gun violence may surprise you. According to the Pew Research Center, the majority of gun deaths in America are suicides, not murders. Figures posted for 2021 reveal that 54 percent of gun deaths in this country were suicides.
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reported that in 2022, 27,032 Americans died by gun suicide, the highest number on record, reflecting an increase of 2.7 percent over 2021, adding that the rate of Black youth gun suicide has tripled since 2013.
Most American gun owners say that they acquired firearms for their personal safety and protection. But, to repurpose a current campaign meme, the deadliest enemy may indeed be an “enemy within” in the form of mental illness. In America, this lurking adversary is often armed and dangerous and shoots to kill.
The actual danger of gun violence may surprise you.
For decades, movies and reality TV have centered gun violence on Dirty Harrys, glamified career gangstas, slick coke lords and bottom-feeding urban lowlifes, forgetting fumbling Dick and Perry famously pulling the trigger in remote Holcomb, Kansas in 1959 (“In Cold Blood”).
Small heartland towns, perhaps by virtue of their frequent poverty, isolation and lack of mental health resources, are, in fact, fertile breeding grounds for mental illness and resulting gun violence.
In an unexpected twist, “Arms Around America” shines a light on what sociologists call the “suicide belt” of the Mountain West, where, each year, people take their lives at alarming and increasing rates. Montana leads the pack.
In Utah, where the “Arms Across America” troupe engaged in community work, suicide is the leading cause of death for Utahns aged 10 to 17. Utah’s youth suicide rate has more than tripled in the past two decades, and the rate for adults there is well above the national average. “We learned that in Utah, you can designate, or hand off, your gun to someone if you’re having suicidal ideations,” observes Gonzales.
She continues, “We encourage people to lean into the complexity, meaning the reality and the humanity of the experience of living with guns in America. One of our characters, Patricia, experiences domestic violence. Another character, Tiffany, joins the military to escape the gangs of the barrio. Nothing about it is cut-and-dried. We invite complicating the conversation, expanding it, versus trying to make it small and simple. Because living with guns is not simple, legally, morally, psychologically, or any other way.”
Asked what she hopes for as the audience takeaway, Gonzales says, “I’d like to see people develop more of a softness and a curiosity on the issue, as well as a desire to connect and create safe spaces to do so.”
She adds, “Being from Texas and understanding all that implies, I can’t wait to bring this production home.”
The live stage event opens in Los Angeles and then moves on to Miami, Helena, Montana, and the Kayenta Art Village in Ivins City, Utah, with future locations TBD.
Deets
- “Arms Across America”
- Theatrical world premiere Friday, November 15, Saturday, November 16, 8:00 PM
- UCLA Nimoy Theater, presented by CAP UCLA
- 1262 Westwood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024
- Ticket orders
- Box Office: 310-825-2101 during business hours
- Chat: tickets.ucla.edu
- Email: [email protected]
- UCLA’s Central Ticket Office windows located at 325 Westwood Plaza (ground level, across from Pauley Pavillion) are open Monday through Friday, from 10:00 AM until 4:00 PM.
