For high school students, the Oklahoma City bombing could seem like something from the distant past. But a touring theatrical production hopes to bring the stories of those impacted by the tragedy to the next generation.
At Putnam City West High School in Oklahoma City, students gathered to watch an abbreviated performance of “In the Middle of the West” — a play of testimonies from survivors, family members and others affected by the bombing.
Oklahoma City University junior Kevin Alvarado portrayed Chris Fields, a firefighter captured in an iconic photo holding a baby who died in the blast.
“I was waiting on the paramedics to get a blanket out, because we weren’t going to put that baby on the ground. So anyway, once we got the blanket out, I sat down and I just patted her on the back and I told her, you know, ‘I just gotta catch up with my crew.’” Alvarado, as Fields, said. “And that was really the last encounter I had with any of that until the next day.”
The actors, all students at OCU, are practicing “verbatim theater.” Not only do they perform interview transcripts word for word, but they each have an earpiece with interview recordings so they exactly replicate inflections and emotions.
Junior Maddy Grimes portrayed Aren Almon, baby Baylee’s mother.
“I remember the next day I woke up, I saw the paper, the newspaper, and there was that picture of Chris and Baylee on the front of it.” Grimes, as Almon, said. “To know that I had lost a child, and I had everybody else see her dead too.”
UK-based playwright Steve Gilroy wrote the play 11 years ago when he was commissioned by OCU. Over two dozen voices are featured in the full-length play.
He said he hopes the production can be performed at other Oklahoma schools over the next year.
Other voices in the play include an arborist who tends to The Survivor Tree — an American Elm that withstood the blast — a doctor at a hospital who treated bombing victims and survivors and first responders grappling with the aftermath of living with what they had experienced.
After the performance, OCU senior Joy Noel Stachmus said it’s important for young people to learn about the bombing through more than just lessons, but experiences like this.
“Learning about it from their stories, rather than from an article or a textbook, is so impactful,” Stachmus said. “And it’s just so great to be able to have that empathizing with them, but also just to be able to hear the firsthand accounts of, this is what it felt like for me.”
Senior English teacher Tracey Rose lived near the bombing when it happened. She said the play brought her “right back to that day.”
“It was just like as if time collapsed, and you’re right back in all that emotion and feeling — that devastating feeling,” Rose said. “But also little miracles and little bits of hope.”
Putnam City West senior Orion Bruins said seeing the performance gave substance to something that, to him, always felt intangible.
“Being able to hear that commonality between these different perspectives of people, it really made me think about how I might have reacted or how I may have handled something like that in that moment,” Bruins said. “And really just, makes me think a lot.”
The cast tours at four Oklahoma high schools and will perform selections from the play at Arts and Culture Day on Thursday at the State Capitol.
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