The kid was 17 years old on Feb. In an attack spanning less than six minutes, the killer, whose name you can look up for yourself if so compelled, managed to wound 17 people in addition to the 17 he killed. Oliver includes almost none of the details I cited in the previous two paragraphs in his jeremiad. Beyond agreeing with Oliver, I empathize with him. I cannot fathom the loss he and his family have suffered. I admire him for channeling his grief into healing action, pointing out, as he does, that the way we regard tobacco companies now versus a generation ago proves that change is possible.
But I have to cop to deep ambivalence about what Oliver has put on stage. The current version was directed by Michael Cotey. He wears a similar costume, a pair of artfully torn jeans and a dark tee bearing one of several vaguely political slogans, each night. He tears sheets of paper away from a large easel stage right to reveal life-size photo-illustrations of each member of his familyβincluding their dog, Banksy βending with Guac. Joaquin Phoenix has been a movie star since before Guac was born.
You could get the impression from this show that school shootings and mass shootings in general are not regular occurrences in the U.
That they are is obscene, and the fact that we tolerate it shames us all, but to do this work, Oliver has to reckon with that. How is Change the Ref better than or different from, say, Sandy Hook Promise, the advocacy group founded by parents whose children died in the December massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut? For all this show tells us, Change the Ref is the first and only organization of its kind.
Full disclosure: I became a monthly donor to Sandy Hook Promise after that school shooting, 62 months before the one that killed Guac. Of course, if Guac persuades anyone to join an anti-gun violence group, then that matters more than whatever trivial reservations I have about it as a show. Look, I want to vote for Oliver. I want to sign his petition. I want to give him a hug. For longer than Oliver and his family have been able to vote: He notes that they became American citizens on January 20, , the very day President Donald J.
