This play comes out of an exercise that I assigned to my students for our class this evening. In solidarity, I felt like I should attempt to tackle the same assignment: a 10-minute play based on a prompt. These characters come from another short play that I wrote about five years ago call "Another Kind of Opera Quiz," and they've continuously popped up in my head following the events of June 12, 2016. I finally heard their voices clearly enough last evening. This is what they had to say.

The tragic massacre in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday, June 12, has left me feeling broken, helpless, and hopeless. Here's all I've got...