Review: Hammer Ensemble’s ‘Lockdown’ – Gun Violence as a Symptom of Cultural Division

At the beginning of the Hammer Ensemble’s Lockdown at the Flying Anvil Theatre, the ensemble of seven actors don metaphorical animal skins and masks suggesting early human beings, then depict a struggle for intercultural power in which the largest and most cunning gain superiority using the weapons available to them—bones. This striking symbolic pantomime poses the question— if we, as the human race, are inherently programmed to seek out weapons of violence, what happens to society when our toolmaking prowess creates weapons that easily give any individual the ability to cause widespread injury and death?

Playwright Linda Parsons and director John Ferguson then transport Lockdown to the present day. The human race has long since given up animal skins as clothing and heavy bones as weapons, yet society has somehow embraced modern firearms as a right of existence, despite their capacity for damage. Lockdown investigates this conflict, bouncing between continuing scenes of a group of students huddled together in a school closet while a mass shooting happens around them, with members of the Hammer Ensemble taking character monologues revealing the motives and effects that guns have, or have had, on their lives and family.

Parsons and Ferguson have attempted to represent the gamut of gun-owning and gun-opposing motivations in the monologues, from rural hunters to urban vengeance, from politicians doing the bidding of the NRA to the lunatic fringe wallowing in hate of others, and finally to the mother of a school shooting victim in a deeply emotional performance by ensemble member Carolyn Corley.

What becomes evident from Lockdown—and from the reaction of those in the audience—is that the attraction to guns as weapons is not about personal defense, but about the cultural divide fueled by the powerlessness of individuals in a connected society hampered by disparities in education, wealth, and the employment market—and by the two most fundamental of human emotions: fear and greed.

Lockdown is the quintessential ensemble endeavor, at moments touching, at moments frustrating, yet continually engrossing—an essential discussion that must continue if our society is to survive.

Lockdown has two more performances at Flying Anvil Theatre (1300 Rocky Hill Road) this evening (September 7) and Saturday evening (September 8) at 7:30 PM, plus a performance at Tennessee Wesleyan’s Townsend Auditorium on Sunday afternoon (September 9) at 2 PM.