“Go back to where you are dead,” director Christie Dobson hollers at her students.

The 11 actors – composed of ninth- to 11th-graders – scramble to return to their post-massacre positions.

“When you have a gun … people talk nice,” chant the “victims” in choruslike fashion.

“When you have a gun … people look at you like a VIP.”

“When you have a gun … you can take on anybody.”

The teens are working diligently to bring life to a project steeped in death: “Bang, Bang You’re Dead!”

The one-act play by William Mastrosimone (“Extremities”) delves into the aftermath caused by a high school student named Josh, who goes on a rampage that kills five of his classmates. Josh is haunted by the people he has slain, who try to make him face up to what he’s done.

“When Mastrosimone wrote the play, he was workshopping it with kids who had just had this happen (in Springfield, Ore.),” Dobson says. “Some people were thinking it was exploitive. But the kids who actually created the play said, ‘We really feel like we need to do this because we don’t want anyone else to ever go through it.'”

The novelty of that 1998 Oregon shooting has since been replaced by the repetitiveness of similar horrors in schools throughout the nation. For Dobson and her cast from Central Junior High School and Free State and Lawrence high schools, the reality of such violence was further hammered home once they began preparing the show.

“The Amish massacre happened right in the middle of our rehearsal process,” she says. “It was just exhausting to think about that. I think we all felt kind of bummed. But our answer to what’s happening in the world is we keep working on our play. In a way, it’s kind of therapeutic.”

Emotional connection

Dobson, a 1992 Kansas University theater graduate, took extra precautions when recruiting actors for “Bang, Bang You’re Dead!” She wanted to make sure that they and their parents knew how volatile the subject matter was, in anticipation of any objections.

But for Jacob Mack, who plays the murderer, Josh, he hid the full truth of the play from his family.

“All I’ve done so far is I’ve told my parents I’m the lead. I’ve been keeping it from them because I want them to be surprised,” he says.

That includes keeping the secret that in the play Josh also slays his parents.

“It’s a very powerful script. The first time I read it I was just blown away,” Mack says.

The young actor admits there were many things about his character to which he could relate.

“I don’t want to kill anybody – for the record,” he says, laughing. “But I’m a stressed-out person, and I can see how Josh could get so upset and stuff.”

Bethany Saylor, who tackles multiple roles, including a public defender, also found an emotional connection to the material.

“I can relate to Josh because I felt like going and killing every single person who was harassing me in fifth grade,” Saylor recalls. “They made me want to kill myself, so I wanted to kill them also. I never really thought that deep until doing this play. It made me realize I kind of went through the same thing in a different way.”

Saylor says there is much discussion between cast and crew each night about what is going on in the world and how it pertains to the play.

“It’s kind of like therapy. We’re able to release from the play so we’re not so into it. We can leave everything here and go home fine,” she says.

Blank slate

Director Dobson actually met “Bang, Bang” playwright Mastrosimone several years ago when she lived in Seattle. She is planning on inviting him to see the Lawrence production.

“I like theater that says something to the world,” she says. “This play does it well because it just tells a story. There’s no preaching, no philosophical discussion. You’re not getting someone else’s interpretation. You’re just getting a story about a kid who falls through the cracks and flips out.”

Calling the 40-minute piece “so simple that it’s kind of a blank slate,” Dobson has tried to keep the production physically dynamic. She’s also incorporated various visual tools such as flashlights, and added sound elements such as POD’s anthem “Youth of the Nation” in order to keep things interesting.

In addition to this weekend’s shows at the Lawrence Arts Center, “Bang, Bang You’re Dead!” will be performed at 3 p.m. Nov. 29 at the Lawrence Arts Center as part of the Wednesdays @ Liberty Hall series. And it will be showcased at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 30 at Central, where it will be the centerpiece of a community forum about school violence.

“We want to use the play as a catalyst to talk about what’s happening in our country this year,” Dobson says.

“Because of the timing of what has happened in our country, ‘Bang, Bang You’re Dead!’ has gotten bigger than what we intended it to be.”