School shootings are an epidemic in this country. It’s not up for debate–it’s a fact, and I don’t even need to spout the numerous statistics about them since we are all familiar. How do rattle our senses to wake up about such tragedy in America? How do we reach people who are skeptical or shut their eyes and ears when violence strikes? In Sam Henderson’s Ado, one teacher faces down the barrel of a gun, because educators are sometimes the only line of defense as these moments unfold. Featuring an all-timer performance from the legendary Jenifer Lewis, Ado will spark many conversations.
Lewis plays Ms. Hopkins, an overworked and should-have-been-retired-by-now educator in the middle of a rehearsal for William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing when a former student bursts in with gun. You might think that you know where Henderson’s film is going to go, but Hopkins and the shooter, Bradley, have an exchange that’s both surprising and charged with emotion. Henderson explains how a particular conversation inspired this film.
“At the end of the film, there is a dedication for Miss Bee, and that is my mother,” Henderson reveals. “She has been a middle school theater teacher for almost forty years, and the film was born out of a conversation that I had with her several years ago about what she would do if she was ever in this sitation. I live and work in Texas as a professor, and I joke that I am a fake teacher–my mom is a real teacher. If you’re a public school teacher, you are a real teacher.
When people will ask me what the film is about and I tell them that it centers on a shooting, they will ask me which one. I think that’s the saddest thing in the world. The initial conversation that I had with my mom happened right after the Uvalde shooting since we are not too far from there. I have watched my mother do this job her entire life, and she is almost 70 years old. She said something that was the impetus for the entire film, and that was: ‘The only way that I’d ever have a chance is if the shooter knew me.’ When she said that I froze.
Since Henderson began at such a personal place, you can feel how he wanted to honor educators like his mother. It’s baffling that so many politicians have politicized the classroom and those who put in the time and spend the money to become a teacher or someone who works in the school system.
“It was not my intention to make a political film or something that felt preachy, but when I thought about how this was a uniquely American problem, it struck me that I never thought of it from that perspective,” he says. “We are not going to be the best version of ourselves until we take care of our teachers. They are America’s heroes. Outside of being a dedication to my mother and wanting to be truthful to her experience, I wanted to make a broader point about our education system. What we ask our teachers to do and what we ask our kids to face every day…I can’t believe it.”
Lewis extends that appreciation with love.
“It’s royalty passing by,” Lewis says. “You want to kneel. You want to hold them. I wanted to give Ms. Hopkins the warmth and the love she has for her children. I came up in an all-Black township on the outskirts of St. Louis, so I loved my teachers. I loved my professors in college, and I loved my teachers in New York: Michael Peters, Michael Bennett, all the gays who were the first ones who told me that I was beautiful. I knew I was talented, but they were the first to tell me that I was physically beautiful.
I had had an accident in Africa, and I was still recovering when I received Ado. There were three comedies on my bed, and I reached for it instinctively. I had just finished a 25 city tour of my second book, Walking In My Joy, and when I read the script, I sobbed. It was the best role I’d ever read for myself–it’s a stunning script.”
Most of the film’s main action is a showdown between teacher and former student. We are aware of how time is of the essence, but Bradley cannot move his feet away from Hopkins, the one teacher who he felt seen by. Henderson dove deep to string the tension along.
“I really wanted the audience to be drawn in by Bradley’s occasional lucidity and self-reflection,” he says. “Are Ms. Hopkins tactics working? Is he too far gone? And then I wanted there to be a bit of ambiguity for his demise. Is that a cop back there? Whose gun goes off? To me, leaving the audience on the hook for just a few seconds is better than quickly divulging information.”
Hopkins dims the light hurriedly before Bradley enters. Lewis’ character yells out, ‘You know what to do,’ a horrifyingly real line showing that students are used to this kind of procedure. Since she was in the middle of the house watching rehearsal, the auditorium is bathed in darkness, an extra layer of protection to make the shooter think that no one else is around as the students hide in a nearby restroom. On a distubing level, it’s almost as if we are watching a drama unfold on stage.
“During pre-production, I was very focused on wanting to recreate how this would actually go down,” Henderson says. “I even asked my own kids what the protocols were at their schools. Something that I heard repeatedly is that students/teachers are supposed dim or turn off the lights in the room they’re in and then go to the hiding place. Confronting the shooter is the absolute last option. So in Ado, Ms. Hopkins says, “You know what to do!” And that is supposed to indicate someone backstage dimming the lights, per protocol, on the way to the bathroom. But your artistic interpretation is also entirely on point.”
Lewis spoke about seeing horrors with your own eyes. It changes you. When my husband and I moved from Miami to upstate New York in 2017, we drove north and stopped to see various people we knew along the way. Our first stop was in Orlando, and we visited the memorial of the Pulse nightclub shooting. While not a school shooting, it’s still a landmark of violence in this country involving guns. I remarked to Henderson and Lewis that I was surprised that the building appeared to be so small and located in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
“We are all so horrified,” Lewis says. “[It’s] the end of Apocalypse Now when Marlon Brandon says, ‘The horror…the horror…’ after the arms of the children have been cut off…we’re immune to it now. It’s every other day. I’ll be coming out of my garden and will be pulled over to my piano. When you look Death in the face, you are no longer the same. You are just no longer the same. We have an administration that has ceased to care, but what Sam is doing proves that we have to keep going. You keep going because energy and consciousness is all that exists, and you have to stay in on the front line to balance the horror.”
Henderson’s film made me think about language. Ms. Hopkins performs words from Much Ado to Bradley as he holds a gun directed at her chest, but I couldn’t help but wonder how language affects people. Hopkins’ words, both in the classroom and quoting The Bard’s text, hit her students to enlighten, to heal, and to inspire. We often hear about how school shooters feel bullied or have had hateful words thrown at them. It’s an inquisitive aspect baked into Henderson’s screenplay and something to consider. I couldn’t let this dynamic pair go without asking them what their favorite Shakespeare work is.
“Julius Ceasar and A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Lewis says, without hesitation. Imagine how amazing she would be as Titania or Cassius.
“I think Hamlet is the greatest play to be written in the English language,” Henderson says. “And not just because it’s in the zeitgeist right now. Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet reminded me about the power of Shakespeare and the power of language. I left that experience thinking that if Shakespeare would agree that the reason why tragedy hurts or hits in a particular way is because there is no tragedy without love. I just think it’s the greatest.”
Below is a moment that we had to share when Jenifer Lewis sang an impormptu song about the issue of gun violence.
