Focus Extra 2015 OKC Bombing

FOC US SPRING 2015

ALUMNI MAGAZINE of OKLAHOMA CITY UNIVERSITY

OKCU.EDU

20 YEARS LATER

Oklahoma City University remembers through art and education

Emerging THROUGH HISTORY The ‘20th Anniversary Oklahoma City Bombing Project’ depicts ‘new chapters’ through first-person stories

Stories by SANDY PANTLIK

6 // FOCUS Spring 2015

W

HEN BRIAN PARSONS INTERVIEWED FOR THE ASSOCIATE DEAN OF THEATRE POSITION AT OCU

last February, he proposed the School of Theatre do something to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in downtown Oklahoma City. When Parsons got the job, he quickly emailed Music Dean Mark Parker and reconfirmed his commitment to lead a project exploring the healing process that followed the tragic April 19, 1995, event when 168 lives were lost and a city was forever changed.

Parson’s dream, the “20th Anniversary Oklahoma City Bombing Project,” will come to life April 16 – 19 when OCU students and faculty produce and perform an original play based on interviews, conducted two decades after that fateful spring morning, with more than 35 first responders, family members of victims, survivors, and officials.

“OCU is Oklahoma City’s University,” Parsons said.

“We have a unique opportunity and responsibility to respond through art. In some ways this work is a living memorial and a celebration of the tenacity, recovery, and healing process.”

Performances are free to the public, and a percentage of proceeds from the play’s publication following the event will be donated to the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.

“We are extremely grateful for the help we received from the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum and its executive director, Kari Watkins,” Parsons said. “It is our intent for this play to parallel the mission of remembrance, resilience, and hope.”

Parsons said when he proposed the play, OCU’s theatre season had already been set with 58 shows, more than any theatre school in the country produces. Due to the project’s importance, the play was worked into the season on the weekend of the official anniversary commemoration of the bombing.

OCU commissioned award-winning playwright Steve Gilroy, author of several works, including “Motherland,” which toured the United Kingdom in 2009. The powerful drama shared the stories of women whose everyday lives were touched by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gilroy, who lives in England and is director of performing arts at Northumbria University, specializes in the genre of verbatim theatre, a documentary for the stage usually based on personal interviews and transcripts.

Gilroy and Parsons had worked together at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London years before. “When Brian approached me about the project, initially I wasn’t sure,” Gilroy said. “Partly due to the logistics of working on a project so far away, and I had a number of other projects going on in the U.K., and I had just become a new father.

“In the end, I thought this opportunity is never going to come around again. What an amazing chance to learn about a whole community coming together around

The Oklahoma City Bombing Project cast meets with director Courtney DiBello and playwright Steve Gilroy for a read-through of the original script. Photo by Josh Robinson

this seismic, tragic event. I thought, ‘This is going to be a really interesting journey. Hold on to your hats.’ And that’s what it’s been like. I have no regrets.”

The personal interviews that form the foundation of the play were conducted by OCU students, faculty, Gilroy, and Parsons.

OCU English professor and Carrithers Endowed Chair in Writing and Composition, Brooke Hessler, played an essential role in the project. Through a service-learning initiative since 2002, Hessler has been teaching OCU students to conduct oral histories related to the Oklahoma City bombing. She and her students collaborated with Parsons and Gilroy to collect and transcribe interviews.

Hessler is also the dramaturg for the project.

Gilroy listened to the hours of recorded interviews to write the script for the two-hour play. He said the Oklahoma City bombing project reminded him of his work on “Motherland” when he met and interviewed women who witnessed severe injury to their sons and daughters through war.

“The most dominant feeling at the beginning was trying to process the emotions. If I’m not in the interviews, I am listening to the recordings. Sometimes

TEXT: text // 7

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OCU is Oklahoma City’s University. We have a unique opportunity and responsibility to respond through art.

—BRIAN PARSONS Associate Dean of Theatre

it kind of creeps up on you. I am making lots of notes, thinking about it from a technical point of view, how one story connects to another story, how are we going to theatricalize this. Then afterward, maybe an hour later, I find myself choking on my dinner because I’m welling up. Through the interviews, you hear people revisit the pain of these experiences, but also you get to share the joy of their recovery and their transformation through their experiences.”

Gilroy said in this verbatim process, usually interviewers have to work quite hard to coax stories from people.

“For this project, there is this incredible honesty that comes from people. I haven’t seen that before in any other project I’ve done. I think that is something about the people of Oklahoma City. As soon as you start, people will talk about their experience of the bombing and that’s one thing; but once they start to go beyond that, there are all sorts of different stories that say a lot about peoples’ ability to recover. They find themselves 20 years later where they are no longer defined by what’s happened and they are able to open new chapters in their lives.”

In verbatim theatre, the way the interviewee tells a story is exactly how the dialogue is represented in the play, resulting in an authentic, truthful experience for everyone involved, from the actors to the audience. The playwright weaves the dialogue together to create a story.

“What’s been amazing is we had our first conversation in October.

Normally this process would take at least a year to complete,” Parsons said. “It shows how much the people of Oklahoma City and those involved in this project are keen to share their experience and take the time to continue the process of healing and remembrance.”

Courtney DiBello, instructor of stage management and faculty adviser at OCU, will direct the production. She believes another special part of the play is that the student actors and crew were either not born yet or were babies at the time of the bombing.

“For these students who are participating in the production, and to a large extent the students who will be seeing the production, this is an education as well as a theatrical experience. Especially for the student actors, it is a new experience for them to work on a character that isn’t fiction. They are going to be playing contemporaries who went through something. Even though they (the students) weren’t personally impacted, their lives’ trajectory would have been different without this event. Their parents raised them differently because of this event. The world was different because of this event. I think there is a huge impact not just for the global audience but for the micro community of us. It will change them.”

8 // FOCUS Spring 2015

Cast member Emily Hawkins, a BFA acting senior from Dallas, has a role in the play and conducted interviews for source material. She has been in theatre since she was 8 years old. Photo by Josh Robinson

20th Anniversary Oklahoma City Bombing Project Presented by TheatreOCU Kirkpatrick Fine Arts Center, OCU Campus Burg Theatre • • • •

Thursday, April 16, 8 p.m.

Friday, April 17, 8 p.m.

Saturday, April 18, 8 p.m.

Sunday, April 19, 2 p.m.

Admission is free. Four-ticket limit per reservation. Call (405) 208-5227 for tickets, or visit okcu.edu/ticketoffice

At left: Writer Steve Gilroy explains to the cast how to approach verbatim theatre. At right: Cast member Corinne Mica gives her thoughts on student presentations researching the Murrah Bombing. Mica is a senior working toward a BFA in acting and theatre for young audiences with a minor in directing. Photos by Josh Robinson

Emily Hawkins, a senior BFA acting major from Dallas, has a role in the play and conducted interviews.

“It has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, personally and professionally,” Hawkins said. “It is a story of strength, as opposed to a story of weakness.You have an immense responsibility to do these people and their stories justice. It’s a bit daunting.

Along with the significance They find themselves of the project, it has been amazing to really learn how 20 years later where to put a show together from they are no longer scratch so when we are out in the industry, we can create defined by what’s our own work as well.” happened and they Bryan Bauer, a junior BFA are able to open new theatre design and production major and business major chapters in their lives. from Edmond, and stage manager for the play, said —STEVE GILROY Playwright the entire cast and crew is emotionally invested.

“Everyone has been so kind and gracious — because we are students, we were babies when this happened, we are learning alongside the people watching the play,” Bauer said. “I think there is something fascinating about new works in general. It is awesome to be a part of something that is bringing new theatre into the world. It is even more impactful because I grew up in Oklahoma, we go to school here, it is close to home. This play is going to be published with the original cast listed. In all the plays we’ve read before, we see the original cast on that first page of the script. Now that will be us.”

Gilroy said there are about 30 characters in the play. “The student actors will never forget the relationship they make with the person they play or have interviewed. It becomes quite a special experience.

One that isn’t like any other acting experience they will have in their

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lives unless they do another work like this. They don’t know yet how they will be transformed, but it will stay with them for a long time.”

Living in London, Parsons experienced the constant domestic terrorism threat of the Irish Republican Army, and was within a mile of the Harrod’s department store bombing in 1983 by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. “The OKC bombing is vivid for me. I was 27 years old and I remember the images from the aftermath of the bombing. I would have never imagined then that I would someday interview people directly involved in the event, or commission a play about it. This is a common humanity story of that day and every day after. A story about every single one of us and the ways we adapt and survive. We have been truly blessed by the people who have spoken to us. It is an incredible range of testimony and experience. This play is about today, 20 years after the event. It’s been an honor and a privilege. It is our gift to the city and to the people.”

Parsons has a vision for the play beyond the April 2015 production.

He wants every high school in Oklahoma to have access to the play by creating an educational package that includes scripts, a documentary produced by OCU about the making of the play, a teacher’s packet, and all the materials students will need to research, rehearse, and create their own productions.

“This play offers a way to educate children about the Oklahoma City event and about terrorism. It is our role as artist educators to document this history and make sure the day is never forgotten, the victims are not forgotten, and the people who remain with us are not forgotten.”

OCU has created a fund to accept donations to produce the materials needed to make the script available to more than 1,400 high schools in Oklahoma. To learn more, contact Kassie McCoy, OCU director of development, at kmccoy@okcu.edu or (405) 208-5435.

“The overwhelming message that comes from everybody interviewed for this project is the regeneration of the city as the background. But I think in the end, it is going to be about these very powerful individual stories that when woven together are going to create quite a much bigger human story about recovery,” Gilroy said.

“I think there is a huge impact not just for the global audience but for the micro community.” —COURTNEY DIBELLO, Director

ATTEND THE PLAY: okcu.edu/ticketoffice // 9

A Uniquely Liberal Arts Experience OCU’s engagement with preserving the personal stories related to the Oklahoma City bombing began more than a decade before the current theatre project.

Since 2002, OCU English professor and Carrithers Endowed Chair in Writing and Composition, Brooke Hessler, has guided her students in conducting oral history interviews with people whose lives were connected to the bombing. More than 300 students have participated in service-learning collaborations at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum through this initiative.

Hessler teamed up with Parsons and Gilroy to bring those years of perspective to the theatre verbatim project by conducting oral histories, establishing contacts for interviews, and providing dramaturgical assistance with the script.

This semester, Hessler’s Honors Composition students earned service-learning credit for transcribing oral history interviews for the script, and Hessler is leading a unit on verbatim theatre as a form of arts-integrated social activism in the tradition of the WPA “Living Newspapers” performances.

Additionally, Hessler, Parsons and Gilroy are working on a scholarship of teaching and learning project to examine how verbatim theatre helps students learn and why it is an especially important genre for college students.

“What they are really doing is learning the story behind the story they are telling,” Hessler said. “As a researcher on storytelling, I’m looking at verbatim theatre to see how it embodies storytelling. It is a different way to experience history by being inside it yourself, and the students are doing that. They are living the stories as the people who lived history and it’s becoming a part of them in a way that it wouldn’t ordinarily.”

Hessler believes this project offers a uniquely liberal arts educational experience by reaching across disciplines and into the community. “There’s this complex web between general education and what we do out in the world. My students are able to see that because of this project.”

Adrienne Pierce, a BFA acting freshman, and professor Brooke Hessler discuss the personal significance of items that people attach to the fence at the Oklahoma City National Memorial. The fence originally served to create a safety barrier at the bombing site but quickly became a site for remembering the victims and expressing resilience. Hessler has taken her honors English composition classes to the memorial for years to volunteer and help catalog the items for the museum. Photos by Josh Robinson

Brooke Hessler's class talks about why people would feel drawn to leaving objects on the memorial’s fence.

Bombing victim Paul Gregory Beatty Broxterman had a collection of patches in his Murrah Building office, and patches came to have significance for one of Hessler’s first students who volunteered at the memorial and later became a firefighter.

10 // FOCUS Spring 2015

2015 marks the 20th anniversary of the loss of life, loss of innocence, and loss of the building that once bore the name of Judge Alfred P. Murrah. Taking inspiration from the city’s legacy of resilience, Oklahoma City University School of Law is establishing a unique center for homeland security law and policy dedicated to preventing such tragedies.

With the recent move of the Oklahoma City University School of Law to its new downtown location, proximity might seem to be the strongest tie between the law school and the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. However, the bond goes much deeper.

The historic Central High School now home to the School of Law served as the command center following the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building 20 years ago. For several weeks, the building,

that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards,’” said Dean Valerie K. Couch.

The Murrah Center opening includes a National Summit on Homeland Security hosted by the School of Law in collaboration with the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum and the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security.

Building on a Legacy of Resilience

The aftermath of the bombing and the 9/11 attacks brought to the legal forefront a need to further explore homeland security law and policy. The Murrah Center will offer analysis of the legal issues the U.S. Department of Homeland Security faces, including national security, counterterrorism, disaster and crisis management, domestic use of the armed forces, cybersecurity, and more. The center will serve as a voice on domestic security matters for states, towns, and municipalities, and provide insight and support to public and private sectors on matters of homeland security.

“We want to continue the conversation on how to prevent domestic extremism,” said Josh Snavely, dean for advancement and external relations at the law school. “Integral to our mission is the education of the next generation of lawyers in this relatively new field of law.

Our goal is to prepare future military lawyers, Department of Justice lawyers, and Department of Homeland Security lawyers.”

Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating and former General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Joe Whitley chair the advisory board for the new center “We launched this center,” Snavely said, “because we need to talk about how to create a legal framework and policies to prevent these acts, not react to them.”

then the offices of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, housed first responders, medical teams, and service providers, and city, state, and national leaders directing the rescue and recovery efforts at the bombing site.

Building on that unique connection and filling a critical need to examine the legal issues central to protecting and securing the nation, the School of Law partnered with the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum to open The Judge Alfred P. Murrah Center for Homeland Security Law and Policy. The Murrah Center officially launches April 17 – 20, 2015, in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the bombing.

“The Oklahoma City bombing was one of the worst acts of domestic terrorism in our nation’s history. The Murrah Center enables us to commemorate the victims, honor the citizens who have labored to rebuild our city, and work collaboratively with partners to fulfill the Department of Homeland Security’s mission of ensuring a ‘homeland

On the Forefront and Home Front

For more information about The Alfred P. Murrah Center for Homeland Security Law and Policy, and the National Summit on Homeland Security, visit murrahcenter.org.

Reflections: A Defining Moment Ron Norick serves as chair of the Oklahoma City University Board of Trustees and was Oklahoma City mayor when the Murrah building bombing happened. “It wasn’t a moment you train for,” Norick said. “It was the furthest thing from my mind that we would have a terrorist attack in Oklahoma City.”

In December 1993, voters had approved the first round of Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS 1) that would become the impetus for the city’s renewal. When the bombing occurred, work halted. “We immediately shifted our priority from planning MAPS to taking care of the city.”

Norick remembers the overwhelming response from not only Oklahomans, but from across the globe.

“The first telegram I received that day was from Yehud, Israel, one of Oklahoma City’s sister cities. We were getting telegrams and phones calls from around the world. More than $3 million was donated for the victims without even asking for

Ron Norick

it, from change sent from school children to $1,000 checks. The world stood by us.”

He also remembers the command center set up in the Central High School building, which is now the Oklahoma City University School of Law. “I still think of it today every time I enter the school from the underground parking area on the west side. After the bombing, that’s where all the services were set up to provide food and medical attention for rescue and recovery workers, and communication posts for all the agencies involved. In the building itself, Southwestern Bell made space available where the first response teams could sleep when they came off a shift.”

ADVANCING LAW: murrahcenter.org // 11