In December of 1997, the U.S. News ran a breaking story: due to several fatal shootings in American high schools, more and more school systems were installing metal detectors for increased security. In April of 1999, two students at Columbine High School committed what was widely publicized as the deadliest school shooting in the United States. They murdered twelve other students, one teacher, wounded twenty-four other people, and then took their own lives. In September of 2006, as we are coming up on the fifth anniversary of the atrocious September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, acts of terror and violence make up our worst fears and our best-rated TV shows. In this age of sound bits and statistics—when public high school officials are allowed to search students’ lockers and backpacks, and subway commuters are expected to be on the lookout for unattended bags and suspicious behavior—violence is expected, but not always understood. In Michele Aldin’s Dear America, however, the people, feelings and circumstances behind a terrifying act of violence are brought to light. Dear America, is the unadulterated story of both the buildup and the fallout of a very real scenario: a homemade explosive going off in a public high school.

Two teenage boys are at the immediate center of this drama. Bay (Mike Berberich) comes to visit his best friend Sean (Shawn-Caulin Young) as Sean is detained for questioning. Detectives believe that Sean may have planted the bomb in his home room, which exploded and sent one of his classmates to the hospital in critical condition. Berberich and Young are convincing as young men; they create a believable, dynamic friendship. Sean is suspicious of whether his best friend has been sent by the police to get more information out of him, but Bay swears that he would never intentionally hurt his friend. Young’s superb acting helps to convey his character’s complex, mixed emotions—the relief and pain of seeing but suspecting his best friend. Berberich makes his character solid and charismatic as he tries to sort through what the police have told him, and what he knows about his friend and himself. (Also part of Sound Design, Mike Berberich wrote a powerful song for the production as well.)

While Bay and Sean feel the ramifications of what has happened, they have to cope with issues of loyalty, authority, and ultimately, responsibility. In the end, each boy has to decide just how much he will sacrifice to do the right thing—and perhaps more importantly, to protect his best friend. Dear America, forsakes chronology for understanding; in a scene set in the past, Bay and Sean talk about the irresistibility of blowing things up, and about how there are so many options for materials and explosive style. They discuss their home lives—Bay’s drunken stepfather, and Sean’s depressed mother and indifferent father—and whether Bay truly prefers being with his girlfriend to building bombs with his best friend. The audience slowly comes to understand how and under what pretenses such an act of violence could have been committed. Scenes alternately focus on one (or both of) the boys and the other characters, Sean’s mother Louise (Patricia Randell) and his father’s girlfriend Selina (Polly Lee). Each character is well-rounded, with both evident flaws and admirable qualities. In a split of the stage space (no doubt made so effective by Lauren Rosen’s brilliant direction), the story shifts to sharpen the causes and consequences of the explosion.

Patricia Randell is a stirring Louise, playing up her character’s intrinsic nervousness, her depression since her divorce, and her quirky charm. When addressing the invisible news reporters who have come to interview her, Louise looks out into a fixed point in the audience. The boys, too, look to the audience when they are answering silent questions from unseen detectives. This makes audience members conscious of their roles—the roles of society—in tragedies like this. Sometimes society polices, but mostly it is a spectator in search of sensationalism.

Selina is the character with the furthest separation from the catastrophe, but as she lives with Sean’s father, she is still very much involved. Polly Lee is excellent as the eccentric, high-strung, yet somehow likable father’s girlfriend. She makes it looks as though she has effortlessly slipped into an extremely difficult role. Selina is the one who discusses death with Sean, who is there when death hits closer to home than ever before, and who tries to shield him from the pain of hearing what his mother accidentally said on national television. She does this all while wearing goggles and chopping vegetables in very specific ways on the living room coffee table.

As a whole, Dear America, is realistic, bold and compelling. Michele Aldin wrote this script unafraid to delve into issues of the teenage condition, dysfunctional families, media practices, fascination with violence and the accessibility of weapons. Dear America, is an imperative, timely exploration of the many facets of an isolated incident of violence, and of how it can affect American society at large.