When Abby Dougherty from Canton was a senior at Creekview High School in 2024, a gunman roughly 50 miles away at Apalachee High School in Winder killed four people and injured nine others.
When it happened, many of Dougherty’s fellow students were apathetic, “because (shootings) are something they are so used to at this point,” she said.
Others were “solemn and quiet and didn’t want to talk about it.” A few were “immature, cracking jokes and saying insensitive things.”
Then came the rumors about threats of another shooting planned at her school.
“Everyone was paranoid,” Dougherty, now 18, recalled.
Credit: Courtesy of Enough Plays
Credit: Courtesy of Enough Plays
A protest against gun violence was planned soon after by a fellow student, to be held on the school’s football field. Dougherty didn’t attend, but heard it was shut down before it really began.
“There were policemen telling us, ‘Do not go protest. Go to class or you’ll get in trouble,’” she said.
The memory of all this popped into her mind when she was presented with an opportunity to write a script for a 10-minute play about gun violence for a program called Enough! Plays to End Gun Violence.
Dougherty, now a Brenau University freshman, was a member of Alliance Theatre’s Teen Ensemble during its 2024-2025 season. The ensemble is an audition-based program for teens and young adults to gain exposure to the inner workings of a professional theater company.
Alliance Theatre has been a partner with Enough! since the initiative was launched by Chicago-based director and playwright Michael Cotey in 2019. Dougherty was encouraged to write a play for it.
Enough! Plays to End Gun Violence launches
Cotey started Enough! after he observed his own reactions to three mass shootings that happened in quick succession in 2018 and 2019.
The first was at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
“I was in rehearsal — it was Valentine’s Day,” he recalled. “One of the actors looked at their phone and saw that the Parkland shooting was happening. The room sort of reacted the way that these events always make people react. There was a lot of anger and disgust and discussion about ‘Why does this keep on happening? When’s it ever going to change?’ But then we went right back to rehearsing the play.”
Cotey felt sick afterward.
“I felt like, this is what we do. These things happen, we react and then we just move on with our day like it’s the weather,” he said.
Credit: Courtesy of The Alliance Theatre
Credit: Courtesy of The Alliance Theatre
He started thinking about how he could use his skills as a writer and director to do something. He thought about staging a play, but the material didn’t yet exist.
Maybe, he thought, he could ask playwrights to write works about gun violence. It was an idea.
But then a friend and mentor pointed out a problem: Were professional playwrights really the voices that need a platform to talk about gun violence? Cotey took the question to heart.
Shortly after, Cotey saw footage of the March for Our Lives protests.
“It was the youth movement that really put me on notice,” he said. It was an ‘aha’ moment. “Maybe it’s teens (that need the voice).”
The idea percolated for a time, but then in 2019, two more mass shootings — at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and at a bar in Dayton, Ohio — happened within 24 hours of each other.
Cotey snapped to action. “I was like, if I don’t, no one’s going to do my idea. I am the one I’m waiting for,” he said.
He began cold-calling and emailing theater companies across the country to rally support and recruit teens to write 10-minute plays confronting gun violence from their own perspectives. They could address any kind of gun violence, not just mass shootings.
Atlanta’s Alliance answered Cotey’s call to participate.
In 2020, Enough! collected its first round of national submissions, roughly 250 plays. Volunteer judges — writers, directors, actors and educators — read 10 plays each. After the pool was narrowed twice, a selection committee chose the six winning plays.
The winning scripts were workshopped, revised, published, distributed and made available for free to organizations worldwide. Those groups could stage the plays on a day of their choosing, or opt to present them on a coordinated national reading day.
Now in its fourth year, Enough! has published 24 plays, including this year’s six winners.
Dougherty’s play, “Holding Space,” was chosen as a winner from 127 nationwide submissions. It has now been staged at 70 locations across 30 states and in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Two Atlanta organizations have staged readings of the six winning plays: Jared’s Heart of Success on Saturday and the Alliance on Monday.
Jared’s Heart of Success is a nonprofit founded by Atlanta mother Sharmaine Brown in memory of her son who was killed by a stray bullet in 2015 while walking to a neighborhood cookout. The organization focuses on preventing youth violence by teaching leadership, conflict resolution and mental wellness in Georgia middle and high schools.
Its Youth Advisory Council, a group of students committed to year-round advocacy and peer mediation, staged a reading of the six winning plays.
“It’s been really inspiring for me to see where they started and see them take this on,” Brown said.
Credit: Courtesy of The Alliance Theatre
Credit: Courtesy of The Alliance Theatre
Trapped by the cycle
“Holding Space” was the only play by a Georgia-raised playwright to win. Another winner, “Under Wraps,” was written by Texas native Olivia Stanley, an Emory University student.
Dougherty’s play was inspired by her memory of the school protest that fell apart before it began at Creekview High last year. She had never written a play and taught herself online how to format the script and include stage directions.
She never expected to win.
“It was a surprise to me,” she said. “I didn’t know anything about the world of playwriting, and I didn’t think anything would come of it.”
The play takes place in a holding cell where two characters, Lucy and Catherine, have been arrested at a school protest. Each girl represents a different response to gun violence.
Lucy is ready to fight for change. She organized the protest. When a police officer broke her protest sign, she fought him and got arrested.
While upset about the shootings, Catherine chose not to participate in an activist response.
“She doesn’t believe that she can really create an impact,” Dougherty said. “She chooses apathy. She just wants to live her life and move on.”
Dougherty said before she wrote the script, she was more prone to being a Catherine; but now she has an avenue of impact.
“I now understand that you can use what you’re good at, and what gifts you have, to help reach people,” she said. Activism doesn’t need to look one way.
Most of the teens and young adults Dougherty knows, she said, are also like Catherine: numb to the frequency of school shootings.
“They joke about it. They say, ‘Oh just going for another day of school. Hope I don’t get shot.’ They laugh. Even though deep down we all recognize the tragedy.”
Dougherty’s play, Cotey said, echoed a theme that surfaced from all this year’s finalists.
“Every play of the six has some element of feeling trapped,” he said, “Trapped within that cycle, or trapped within this story about gun violence. It is not preordained. We are telling ourselves that this is a fact of life, that this is a way of life in America, and these young people are writing about being trapped in that.”
Cotey believes the theme is telling.
“If theater is about holding a mirror up to nature,” he said, “this is what’s being reflected back.”
TO PARTICIPATE
Organizations wishing to stage an Enough! play can visit enoughplays.com.
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