TRIGGER WARNING: The following talks about gun violence, suicide and other dark themes.
Mouths open wide from shock, stomach cramps from laughing too hard and gasps filled Hal Todd Studio Theater in moments of terror during, “Gloria,” a San José State-run production.
“Gloria” written by American playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and categorized as a comic-drama play, according to the official San José State production’s calendar, takes a “harsh and unflinching look at workplace toxicity and dysfunction.”
The play begins with a group of ambitious editorial assistants for New York’s biggest magazine company. Every character works in cubicles, argues and makes jokes with one another.
The three main editorial assistants, Ani, Dean and Kendra, make small talk and gossip about Gloria, another worker in the office, after she hosted a party at her house that not many from the office attended.
When the audience is first introduced to Gloria, characters Dean and Kendra are not on set. Gloria enters the stage with an uneasy stage presence as she gives Ani cold responses about the party and how it went.
While the audience is watching the team have a conversation, a loud gunshot fills the theater.
Moments after chaos unfolds on stage, Ani and Miles are killed and Gloria takes her own life, sparing only Dean’s life.
Economics freshman Yasmeen Abuayed, who played the role of Gloria, said she felt quite uncomfortable having to wield the gun.
“It makes me feel bad and weird, so I can’t imagine what it is like for the audience,” Abuayed said. “Even when I was rehearsing it until now, the feeling is still there, and I still don’t like it.”
The rest of the play shows the mental and physical aftermath of surviving the shooting, and how the survivors were affected.
Theater arts senior Alice J. Lee, who played Kendra, said there were multiple reasons why she wanted to audition for “Gloria.”
“This story takes on a very serious topic of how social media portrays serious issues such as shootings around the world,” Lee said. “This play also has very dynamic fun characters to play, so that also attracted me.”
The ending takes place in a Los Angeles television producing company who wants to make a show about the shooting, which made headline news.
The LA television company wanted to create a show about the shooting after Nan, one of the characters who survived the shooting, wrote her own story of how the incident affected her.
Theater arts senior James Perry, who plays Loren, said he wasn’t too affected by the theme of gun violence.
“My character is not directly involved in that particular scene, so for me it wasn’t that bad,” Perry said. “I did have to do a little character research because he changed in the second act due to possible PTSD.”
Watching these television producers become excited over Nan’s story created a disturbing and uneasy mood for the audience.
The message was that anything traumatic can be turned into entertainment, and for these television producers, the horrific events were nothing but a theatrical-adjacent inconvenience that they could make money on.
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