The paragraph-long “trigger warning” on the back of the playbill is not the only detail that sets “Breaking News” apart from the traditional play. The play was written and directed by the talented junior in the Residential College, Skyler Tarnas, who believes that these controversial topics that affect everyone should not be kept on the back burner.
This smart and complex comedy/tragedy splits up the many stories of citizens in the fictional town of Hiddlesville, and amps up the drama in the final scene when all of their worlds collide. First, we are introduced to Amanda Hart (Rowan Richards) who is a war veteran, hesitant to participate in the county Veterans’ Parade. She is befriended by Leon James (Kyle Stefak), a timid boy who persuades Amanda to march and be honored for her services. We later find out that Leon has been taken under the corrupted wing of Milo Hawkes (Paul Mayer), a troubled 28-year-old. Together, they make bombs to “make the world care…to make people feel something.” In fact, a few seconds later, a bomb goes off at the parade and places Amanda Hart in critical care. Leon is devastated. Milo takes the bomb’s energy and drives forward, planning the next attack.
The scenes shift and we are introduced to the police station, where the officers are trying to locate the bombers and put a stop to the terrorism. Agent Frederick Dole (Alex Bernard) volunteers to head the search. Meanwhile, the audience is tuned into the “Breaking News” reports with your host, Jack Kingsley (Travis Reilly). After each bombing, Kingsley breaks in with report after report, with each one becoming less and less accurate. In the tense last scene where Agent Dole and Leon are facing each other down the barrel of their guns, breaks suddenly into…the PLOT TWIST that no one saw coming. With all of the cameras and spotlights on her, Leon’s crazy aunt leaps out of a box she had been hiding in for hours and shoots Leon in the back because she wants to be “the hero” and receive televised fame.
I asked Tarnas to explain the message he hoped his viewer’s would get out of the play. I was interested in his new genre, “a comedic tragedy.” How could someone possibly make innocent deaths funny? In his own words, he says, “Tragedy is tragedy. It’s sad. People die. There’s no escaping that. But there’s also no escaping the fact that with the media devoting an insane amount of attention to every sad event they see, there’s a lot of comedy to be had. You don’t know whether to cry at the dead people on the screen, or laugh at the fact that CNN has Nancy Grace and Ashleigh Banfield in the same parking lot on a split screen. It’s that conflict that I chose to base the play on.”
Indeed, the satire of it all came from the broadcasting narrative. People who believe their job is more important than their life. That entertainment and fame is more important than the truth. The playbill’s “Director’s Note,” posited the insightful question, “What really is so different between a terrorist and a troubled young man?” Why do we so often demonize ‘foreigners’ for causing trouble when we have ‘terrorists’ in our own country? Tarnas pokes fun at broadcast racism when Jack Kingsley pronounces the young men’s American names, Leon James and Milo Hawkes, as ‘Layon Hammays’ and ‘Meelo Hawkees.’
Tarnas presents family issues as one possible reason why people are hardened by the world. He creates a subplot, shown as a brilliant flashback, of Leon’s childhood at home. After his dad left the family, his mother (Sara Head) began dating a new man, who hated Leon. They moved in with the boyfriend, but the mother slowly began to grow annoyed by having Leon around. She wanted him to leave her and her new ‘guy’ alone. Tarnas beautifully staged these memories with the simplicity of a spotlight, metaphorically acting as the inside of Leon’s brain. All Leon ever wanted was for his mother to notice him, to love him. Perhaps, terrorists aren’t looking for the world’s attention. They really want the attention from the only one who can’t give it to them.
A similar story of family hardship follows Agent Frederick Dole, who has a wife (Anne Marie Barry) and two children at home, yet he has lost interest in being a father. He tells his wife that “his job is the only thing that makes him feel alive.” It is this paralleling of narratives that fleshes out the entire play and makes all of the characters so well-rounded.
One thing that really struck me happened in the tense and emotional last scene. Leon James, sits in the empty warehouse, remote control in hand. One press of the thumb and he can make the entire broadcasting studio explode. Agent Frederick Dole finds him and tries to coax him out of it. Leon explains that the reason why he makes bombs is to make people feel something. Tragedy makes us come together. Which I actually found, frightfully, so true. After both man-made and natural disasters, social media is bombarded with funds, raising money for the victims. People hold a little tighter to their families and loved ones. The true tragedy occurs after Leon James is shot by his aunt and dies. Agent Dole’s wife has found the bomb and deactivated it (yay! for strong female roles!), which means that even if Leon had pressed the remote control, nothing would have happened. Leon did not have to die.
I’m not even sure I can explain the emotional roller coaster that this play took me on. At times, I laughed at the slapstick humor, which though sometimes a little silly or overdramatic, I understand why it was necessary. The play could have worked as just a tragedy, but the mood lighteners made us appreciate the actors’ performance skills even more. Not just anyone can deliver both comic and tragic lines with such control. At other times, I curled myself into a ball, hands over my ears, preparing for the gun to go off, while chanting in my head, “Don’t do it. Don’t shoot!” That is the magic of the play. We lose sense of the fictionality of the play, and it becomes all too real. The team of Tarnas’ brilliant writing and the amazing skill of the actors who brought it to life was an astounding success….and that is ‘breaking news.’
