“Dante Under the Desk,” a new play by Christina Kirk, professor of theatre, will have a public reading at 7 p.m. Sept. 29 in the Lab Theatre, located on the third floor of the Temple Building.
The reading is free and open to the public. The reading is made possible with support from the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film and will feature students from the Carson School.
It is the newest work from Kirk, whose recent play, “A House Divided,” premiered at the Lied Center for Performing Arts Sept. 17.
“Dante Under the Desk” takes place in December 2012 and addresses serious matters such as gun violence, mass shootings, substance abuse, suicide and bullying.
“But the message of the play is hopeful, and there is a lot of humor,” Kirk said.
It’s also deeply personal for Kirk. While the play is entirely fiction, events in the play are based on actual events that happened to her daughter, whom the main character of Grace is loosely based upon. Another character in the play, her older brother Ray, is loosely based on Kirk’s son.
“It was very, very challenging to write about something so personal. It was frightening,” Kirk said. “And I think the hardest moment was when I shared my first draft with my daughter for the first time because I wanted to do justice to her experience and make sure that it was OK. She was amazing because after the first draft, she said, ‘Mom, you haven’t gotten under the desk yet.’ I went back, and I went deeper because I think I was a little afraid of the material, too. And here she is, the one that had been through the experience, guiding me to go deeper and not to be afraid to uncover and unlock these characters.”
The title of the play comes from a literary club that four teen girls form, inspired by the main character Grace, who they discover was reading Dante’s “Divine Comedy” under her desk during French class in school.
As the play begins, Grace is back home from her first semester in college, and she and Ray, who also just returned from college, are hanging out in the kitchen waiting for their parents to return home.
“As they are hanging out together, different topics trigger Grace to leap back into scenes from her past,” Kirk said. “The play becomes more and more non-linear and surreal as it progresses.”
Grace is a huge “Dr. Who” fan and experiences these flashbacks as if she is in a science-fiction adventure trying to solve a mystery.
“The audience goes on this adventure with her as she gradually sorts through past events and tries to figure out what it all means,” Kirk said. “As Grace travels through her sci-fi adventure, we become increasingly aware of the contemporary pressures that weigh on her and her friends to get it all right and be ‘perfect.’”
Kirk notes that the timeframe between 2009-2012 was the beginning of the shift toward social media and the phone-text culture. Other events referenced in the script that were happening at that time include the Gabby Giffords shooting in January 2011 and the Sandy Hook school shooting in December 2012.
“I think this is a play about that moment in our history when we went through a big transition in terms of social media, phone technology — everything shifted,” Kirk said. “And there’s all these studies that are being done right now about the impact of the shifts that were made and the pressures that are on young people. What I’m trying to lift up is what I see, and it hasn’t stopped since then. It’s only become more intense. I think contemporary people will see a corollary to what was happening at that time.”
Kirk is excited to present the reading at the Carson School.
“I’m particularly excited about working with our students on it,” she said. “This is so thrilling to do a piece that’s entirely suited to college students. I really think it has a life at universities.”
The cast for the reading includes Harper Allen, Luka Benjamin, Ren DeFor, Sofia Drelicharz, Karnie Gottschalk, Sam Landretti, Jordan Lockert, Kaitlin Myrant, Danielle Stolze and Luke Stursma.
