May 4thVoices by David Hassler (review)

May 4^thVoices is an historical play based on oral histories of the May 4, 1970 shootings at Kent State University. The Kent State Shootings, also known as the Kent State Massacre, occurred in Kent, Ohio, during a student protest against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. The Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed students, killing four and injuring nine. This event incited a considerable national response, further affecting the negative public opinion of the Vietnam War. The writer of May 4^thVoices, David Hassler, edited and arranged the interviews from the ongoing Kent State Shootings Oral History Project to develop his script. All of the text is adapted directly from these interviews. (Audio and transcriptions are accessible through the Kent State Library Special Collections and Archives and can be found online at http://www.library.kent.edu/page/13894 .) The minimal voice of the narrator is excerpted from the poem “May 4, 1970/A Memory,” written by Maj Ragain, a Kent State University PhD graduate and permanent resident of Kent.

David Hassler’s concept for May 4^thVoices was to take the 110 fully transcribed interviews with students, faculty, guardsmen, residents, administrators, and community residents and create an anonymous voice (in the sense that the audience is unaware of the identity of the people speaking) to tell the story of May 4, 1970 and its aftermath. In this way, Hassler aimed “to capture the sense of trauma, confusion, and fear felt by all people regardless of where they were standing that day”(May 4th Voices Play Bill. Kent, OH: Kent State University, 2012). The cast was comprised of Kent State students of various grade levels, all wearing different shades of black and gray, while the set was equally simple, comprised only of a few folding chairs and a white sheet. This simplicity added to the anonymous voice, as the actors’ lines wove seamlessly together. The play’s story began before the shooting and ended with reflections on that day and what it still means in the present. The range of perspectives and topics presented truly illuminated the complexities of the topic at hand. To list only a few, the play touched on the following themes: the draft, black students, generational conflict, the shattering of American idealism, the impact of war photographs, global outrage/compassion, women feeling grateful for not being men, martial law, and the demonization of the Hippie movement. One of the more striking scenes was the guardsmen describing what was going on in their own minds when they shot the students, which for many was a hazy state of confusion, thinking that they had in fact missed an order and thus began shooting to follow suit. Most notably, the play demonstrated that the most outstanding emotion across these perspectives was fear.

After the performance ended, writer David Hassler, director Katherine Burke, and the cast conducted a question-and-answer session with the audience. Looking around the audience, a number of people, young and old, were moved to tears. This speaks to some of the advantages a play has over more traditional print formats of oral history. Reading history can often be flat and lack a personal touch. Even with a documentary film, the viewer is separated from the action by a screen. A play, by contrast, is a three-dimensional experience, and members of the audience play an active role in creating the atmosphere of the performance. By acting out the event and recreating the tone and emotion of people actually involved, the play creates a reality that allows the observer to imagine and come closer to an understanding of what it actually felt like to be there. The emotional response of the audience indicates that May 4^thVoices did create an alternate reality for its audience.

Just as the Kent State Shootings...