 ECHO BOOM !
Online Ticket Orders
Lazzara Performance Hall
(UNF Fine Arts Center)
Wednesday, October 3:
2:15pm & 7:30pm
Thursday, October 4: 10am
The University of North Florida proudly presents the Jacksonville premier of ECHO BOOM. This surreal and provocative theatre explores themes of violence and youth culture through the lens of Columbine, 9/11, Virginia Tech, and the contemporary political and religious landscape. In presenting this theatre event during Peace Awareness Week, our hope is that this production creates fertile context for critical thinking about difficult themes that inform an analysis of violence and conflict in American culture and social institutions, particularly as that may be experienced by young Americans.
Following each presentation, the audience will be invited to participate in Talk-Backs and reflective Dialogue Circles with the playwright, cast members, and other members of the audience, with the aim of unpacking the play's significance and its application to themes of conflict transformation in contemporary American culture.
 Admission:
$12 General Public; $3 Students
Tickets can be purchased in THREE ways:
(1) In person at the UNF Box Office, located on the Ground Floor of the UNF Fine Art Center; 8:30am-5pm; Bldg 45, Room 1400;
(2) Online through the secure link below; All online purchases are "WILL CALL;" No tickets will be mailed to patrons;
(3) Calling UNF Ticket Box Office at: (904) 620-2878
Click Here to Purchase your ECHO BOOM tickets Online
STUDENT DISCOUNT TICKETS MUST BE PURCHASED IN PERSON AT THE BOX OFFICE. Students will be required to show a valid Student ID from any educational institution.
The UNF Ticket Box Office will be open prior for prior to curtain time for each performance, so on-line ticket purchases can be picked up just prior to the performance of your choice.
MORE ABOUT THE PLAY: This 90 minute play is an adaptation of Antigone, where a soon-to-be high school valedictorian's life is forever altered when her younger brother goes on a school shooting spree and then his body goes missing. Ash Greyson, the sister in question, must navigate the aftermath of tragedy and the terror of modern America to find some justice and a little peace.
 Originally produced by the Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago in 2006, this thought provoking presentation, by playwright Caitlin Montanye Parrish, addresses themes that have influenced the lives of a generation of young Americans born between the 1980s and the early 1990s.
Caitlin is a former resident of Atlantic Beach and graduate of Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville. After completing her studies at DePaul, Caitlin co-founded the Hypatia Theatre Company in Chicago.
The play will be cast by students from UNF and Douglas Anderson School of the Arts.
Please be advised that Echo Boom contains mature content including situations involving minors and gun violence, profanity, and drug use, as well as satire of a religious and political nature.
Caitlin Montanye Parrish, a Florida barrier island native, is a founding member and the literary manager of Hypatia Theatre Company. Since starting a playwriting career at age 18 with The View From Tall, winner of the national Young Playwrights Festival, her work has been viewed Off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre, regionally at Portland Stage in Maine, and locally at PROP THTR, Chicago Dramatists, DePaul University, The Athenaeum Theatre, and the Around the Coyote Festival. Her play Red Georgia Clay was the debut production of Hypatia Theatre, and her Florida Styx opens the summer of 2006. The View From Tall recently received a reading at Manhattan Theatre Club and has been optioned for an Off-Broadway run next season. You will know her by the tattoo of Beatrice on her left forearm, her dizzying height, and the pervasive scent of camellias. She looks forward to developing a captivating theatre of the sublime. She is currently writing a musical, angels’angles, based on the lives of Lewis Carroll, which will be work-shopped at RhinoFest 2006.
Excerpts from the Program Note by the Playwright, as it appeared in Echo Boom's Premier at The Athenaeum Studio Theatre in Chicago Illinois, April 2006:
Most Americans did not consider terrorism a part of their lives until after September 11, 2001. The first thing my father said to me when I drove home from school that day was, "I'm so sorry. Everything has changed for you kids." At the time, it did not occur to me to contradict him. Terrorism has been a very prescient force in my life ever since Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 15 people, including themselves, on April 20, 1999.
Even though I live nowhere near Jefferson County, Colorado, overnight every student who attended my high school became a potential terrorist. Klebold and Harris killed with the hope that rampage would become the freedom fighting of ostracized students, and many adults assumed that it would. It was terrifying to wonder, through the bomb threats and less successful copycat rampages, which student in a long, black coat would bring inexplicable mass murder to a place of education next.
What I consider inexcusable is the preventative action taken in the wake of that panic by those in charge of my education. Within weeks, every student at my high school had an ID card with a barcode. Random bag and locker searches conducted by armed officers became commonplace. Students were disciplined with suspension and expulsion for wearing trench coats. Any remark even remotely empathetic towards Klebold and Harris was dangerous, and "bomb" was the worst four-letter word of all. All of these modifications were implemented to prevent another Columbine. It taught me that I was a person to fear.
The Echo Boom generation is comprised of those people born between the early 1980s an the mid 1990s. My hope for Echo Boom is to create a piece to honor a group of people I consider courageous, and whom I believe will inherit more problems than advantages. I am proud to be an Echo Boomer. Not every member of my generation went through a high school experience rife with paranoia and fear, but we have all been aware of terrorism since before the towers fell. I hope this awareness will help us deal responsibly and maturely with the war on terror. I try to find comfort in this hope.
-- Caitlin Montayne Parrish
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