
LOADED LANGUAGE
ELIZABETH SHANNON
sponsored by: JEANNE DUNCAN
SYNOPSIS
Five high school students have grown up in the era of lockdowns and active shooter drills. When a rumor about a school shooter begins to circulate, Kiersa and her friends must decide what they should do to protect their classmates before it is too late.

"Did you hear correctly? You’re kinda freaking me out…"
Elizabeth Shannon
Loaded Language
Playwright's Bio
Elizabeth Shannon is a Maryland-based writer and a current senior. She is an apprentice at the Maryland Ensemble Theatre (MET), as well as a member of the Theatre Focus in the Academy for the Fine Arts. Her play, WHAT ARE YOU HIDING?, which she co-wrote with Morgan Southwell, was a winner of Baltimore Centerstage’s Young Playwright’s Festival, and a finalist in The Secret Theatre’s Act One: One Act Festival, as well as part of the live-streamed reading series, THE FUTURE WAS NOW, by Quarantined Theatre Company, which can be found on YouTube. Her play, SMOKE, has also been published through Scripts For Stage, and had a Zoom performance with University of Texas El Paso’s student organization, Ensemble. Her play, NUCLEAR is a current winner of The Blank Theatre’s 28th Annual Young Playwrights Festival.

Fascinating look at an under-reported phenomenon associated with gun violence - the attendant anxiety of knowing it might happen at any time.
ROBERT SCHENKKAN
Playwright & ENOUGH! panelist
Four individuals tell the story of Malcolm, a Black folk musician whose quest through the Eastern Seaboard to find himself was violently interrupted, painting an evocative picture of the connection shared among strangers through a single life.
In this re-imagining of Buffalo Bill’s storytelling and P.T. Barnum’s grandeur, a ringleader explores the fusion of American myth and gun culture through four acts of an incredible spectacle - and a show gone terribly wrong.
Ms. Martin is an ordinary high school teacher, trying to deal with the everyday stress and worrying ‘what-ifs’ of 21st century teaching. But when her worst fears come true, and she is forced to make a difficult decision and an even more difficult confrontation, what will she do? And how will she move forward from it?
Propelled by the urgency of his own decay and desperate to be heard, BLACK BOY delivers his “villain’s monologue” - a parting speech typically delivered to a hero before their death - to his audience held at gunpoint.
Imani, Aiyanna, Chayenne, and Aaliyah have just graduated high school and are celebrating at a party in their honor until their evening of entertainment takes a tragic turn.
During a recess like any other, Lilah Gordon and her best friend/imaginary dragon, Toucan, set off on a special adventure to help Lilah earn dragon wings of her own. But things go awry when a mysterious noise from her nearby school compels the duo to embark on the biggest quest they have ever encountered.