‘Roseburg’ play slammed by Roseburg community

ROSEBURG, Ore. – The recently debuted play “Roseburg,” based heavily on the shooting at Umpqua Community College, has been met with a chorus of boos from Douglas County residents who call the work exploitative. Its creators, who say it raises important questions about America’s problems with gun violence, stand by it.

“How disrespectful to put a mass shooting on display for people to watch. It’s disrespectful for those who were involved and for our community,” wrote Tasha Marie Jackson on Facebook. “Family and friends of lives lost, people injured, and those dealing with this (emotionally). No class Philadelphia.”

Playwright Ginger Dayle said she received over 500 total messages via social media, email and telephone that, she said, unfairly slammed her work without seeing it or reading the script. She estimated more than three-quarters of the messages were from frustrated locals. Some cast members have been called names and her own home address was posted online.

“I get called callous and mean and evil and it’s like ‘listen, I’m trying to educate you on (the play),’ and then they get mad,” Dayle said. “The negative opinions have made it very personal against me. One girl threatened to burn down the theater, called me a blonde bimbo, an idiot.”

The plot of “Roseburg” intertwines the events of the shooting, in which nine people were shot to death by a lone gunman and nine more injured, with the 1968 campaign of Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy delivered an anti-gun speech in Roseburg during the Oregon primary, which he lost the very next day. He was gunned down less than two weeks later in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel.

The play is produced by the New City Stage Company in Philadelphia.

Its retelling of the shooting includes archival footage of the news in the wake of the shooting as well as actors playing victims and the shooter himself. The shooting remains the deadliest in Oregon history.

In Philadelphia, the play has been given tepid praise. The Philadelphia Inquirer called it “compellingly busy” while a review within the online arts forum Broad Street Review called it difficult to watch, but provocative in raising questions about gun violence.

Dayle compared “Roseburg” to “Frost/Nixon,” a play that famously dramatized an interview with post-Watergate President Richard Nixon and television personality David Frost, and other plays with sensitive subject material.

With the play, Dayle said she hoped to shine a light on gun violence and mental illness. She said about 40 percent of the play involves the events of Oct. 1, with dramatizations of the shooter’s relationship with his mother, the class on which he eventually opened fire and the outside world through chat rooms and dating websites. About half of the play revolves around Kennedy, with general commentary comprising the last 10 percent.

Not everyone is picking sides. Melody Schwegel, the director of the local theater group Umpqua Actors Community Theatre, said while she would probably never stage a production of “Roseburg” here, she respects the work if its mission is to affect change.

“As a fellow artist, I respect their creative output in contributing to performing arts. As a member of the community, I feel the wound is still too fresh,” Schwegel said. “… I’m not upset that something was written. I’m quite interested in getting ahold of the script and reading it. There is a healing process that happens in all tragedies. This may or may not be part of that process. We shouldn’t be too quick to judge the material.”