Columbinus (Oregon Children's Theatre)

When two teens in black trench coats marched through the halls of Columbine High School, most of the cast of Oregon Children's Theatre's Columbinus were just 2 years old.

Now the age that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were then, the theater company is taking a rare dive into violent material, staging the notorious school massacre in a play by Chicago playwright PJ Paparelli, who spent months interviewing survivors and years studying the killers' journals.

Paparelli's play follows an entire Breakfast Club of teen stereotypes—jock, flirt, drama nerd—as they snooze through their alarms and debate Darwin in biology class. When Harris (Thom Hilton) and Klebold (Blake Peebles) attack, they prowl maniacally through the school library, banging on tabletops. Each of their thuds signifies a lethal shot.

The killers' perilous relationship is especially chilling when played by teens. Preparing ammunition, Harris and Klebold argue, brawling right to the black box floor. It ends with Harris pointing a shotgun between his best friend's eyes.

"The greatest school shooting of all time," says Harris.

"And after that?" Klebold asks.

"It's blackness. It's nothing. It's just over."

This is an unusually dark scene for a children's theater company that just staged The 3 Little Pigs. But the teen actors chose the play themselves.

"Dani [Baldwin, OCT's education director] gave us a stack of scripts to pick from," says Hilton. "Right away, we all said, 'This is the one.'"

Director Lava Alapai admits the ample "fucks," pregnancy scare and kiss shared by boys might put off OCT's regular audience. But the cast says it's playing high school as they see it —though that only takes them so far.

"I had no idea what to do," says Peebles of playing Klebold, "I was just a zombie and danced last time!"

So the actors relied heavily on Paparelli's well-researched script. The playwright spent so much time in Littleton, Colo., that its residents called him for consolation after the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, and he interviewed 30 more survivors for a 2012 rewrite, just after another tragic shooting at the midnight screening of Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, another suburb of Denver.

To process any real or staged high-school drama with her cast, Alapai moderated a mini therapy session of sorts before and after each show.

"First time we did the library scene, we went back into the kitchen and told, like, the dirtiest sex jokes," says actress Charlotte Karlsen. "I was crying, and we were just like, ‘Fuck, fuck, la-la, sexy shit, let’s be teenagers!’” 

Hilton, who plays an explosive Harris literally writhing with hatred, says, "I basically think of my biggest fear and play that in the character onstage."

After, he sings himself a little mantra to detach from the darkness: “It’s super-dumb. It’s just a play. It is nothing.” 

SEE IT: Columbinus is at Oregon Children's Theatre's Young Professionals stage, 1939 NE Sandy Blvd., 228-9571. 7 pm Thursday-Saturday, 1 and 5 pm Sunday, April 16-19. $15.

WWeek 2015