New York playwright Nathaniel Sam Shapiro was nine years old when the shootings took place at Columbine High School. They left a lasting impression on him.
But it was the massacre at Sandy Hook, years later, that prompted him to write his new play "The Erlkings," which harkens back to Columbine.
"I went back to Columbine because, especially for people my age, that was really a watershed moment," he says.
His new play, which opens Nov. 16 off-Broadway in New York, comes from the shooters' perspectives. Shapiro says he wanted to try get to the root of why school shootings happen.
“It’s the same thing with any other kind of epidemic," he says. "If this was a disease, we would need to go and study the RNA and DNA of that disease. And to me, the nucleus of this problem is what’s going on in the minds of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.”
One of the victim's family members has objected to the new production.
"This play will sadly only perpetuate our culture of violence and feed into society's larger fears about mass shootings," Coni Sanders, daughter of teacher and coach Dave Sanders, told the Syracuse Post-Standard.
The play features words that killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris wrote in their journals.
According to Shapiro, the title of the show comes from a poem found in Harris' day planner.
This story was produced by CPR's Andrea Dukakis.
