‘Guac’ evaluate: A heart-wrenching case for gun reform

The picture of a grieving dad or mum will not be an unusual sight on the dramatic stage. Euripides, whom Aristotle referred to as “essentially the most tragic of the poets,” returns to the determine of the grief-stricken dad or mum in “Hecuba,” “Hippolytus” and “The Bacchae,” to quote only a few disparate examples of characters delivered to their knees by the loss of life of their youngster.

Shakespeare gives what has change into the defining portrait of this inconsolable expertise in “King Lear.” Cradling the lifeless physique of his murdered daughter, Lear can do nothing however repeat the phrase “by no means” 5 instances, the repetition driving house the irrevocable nature of loss.

In tragedy, the protagonist is commonly stricken by guilt for his personal function, nevertheless inadvertent or inescapable, within the disaster that befell his liked one. Theseus in “Hippolytus” and Agave in “The Bacchae” each have motive to really feel that they’ve blood on their arms. Lear, although “extra sinned towards than sinning,” acknowledges solely after it’s too late the error in judgment that led to the devastation from which there could be no return.

The distinction with “Guac,” the one-man efficiency work on the Kirk Douglas Theatre, is that Manuel Oliver isn’t simply taking part in a bereaved father. He’s one.

Oliver’s 17-year-old son, Joaquín, often known as Guac to household and mates, was one of many 17 lives misplaced in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College in Parkland, Fla. The manufacturing, written and carried out by Oliver, turns a dad or mum’s grief right into a theatrical work of activism.

Co-written by James Clements and directed by Michael Cotey, “Guac” has been sharing the story of Joaquín’s quick however vividly lived life with audiences across the nation. Oliver didn’t simply love his son. He preferred him. Guac was his greatest buddy. He was additionally his trusted information to American tradition.

Immigrants from Venezuela, the household had made a brand new begin in a rustic that Guac helped them really feel was their house. To convey the that means of Guac’s life, Oliver introduces his members of the family by way of a sequence of picture pictures he has crafted into artworks.

The final image, and the one that continues to be observing us all through the efficiency, is of Guac. Oliver continues to reinforce the portrait. Whereas including thrives to the background and making changes to what his son is carrying, he tells us in regards to the life they shared earlier than it was tragically stolen.

Manuel Oliver works on a portrait of his late son in “Guac.”

(Donna F. Aceto)

The tragedy is overwhelmingly actual. Oliver bears the load of it by reworking his grief into gasoline for activism. The efficiency makes the case for stricter gun legislation in America with the heartbreaking eloquence of a father whose life modified completely after dropping his son off at college on a Valentine’s Day that began so promisingly.

What occurred to Joaquín may occur to any of us, anytime, anyplace, in a rustic that has allowed its elected officers to deflect duty for his or her repeated failure to go widespread sense gun laws. Whereas taking cash from the NRA, these cynical politicians supply empty “ideas and prayers” instead of significant reform. The result’s that nobody can go anyplace in public with out eyeing the emergency exits and scanning the group for hassle.

Oliver isn’t a refined theatrical skilled. He’s a dad, at the beginning. But it surely’s his snug ordinariness that enables him to make such a robust reference to the viewers. He’s onstage however may very nicely be exchanging a couple of neighborly phrases with us on our road.

Oliver summons his son by joyfully remembering his virtuosity on air guitar. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Hen” resounds all through the Douglas whereas he enlivens the portrait with impassioned strokes. The phrases “I want I used to be right here” are added to Guac’s T-shirt, and it’s a sentiment all of us devoutly, agonizingly share as Oliver brings his spouse, Patricia, onto a stage that has urgently change into an extension of our nationwide actuality.

In honor of Joaquín, the couple fashioned Change the Ref, a company devoted to elevating consciousness about mass shootings and empowering the following era of activists by way of “creativity, activism, disruption and schooling.” “Guac” is a potent instance of what could be carried out within the wake of a tragedy that may now not be described as unthinkable.