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Night after night, in a darkened room full of strangers, Manuel Oliver revisits the death of his teenage son.
Joaquin “Guac” Oliver and 16 others were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, on 14 February 2018. Manuel Oliver turned this unfathomable loss into art, including a one man show entitled Guac that honours his child and addresses the scourge of gun violence in America.
“It was painful before it became a script for theatre and it’s still painful,” Oliver says by phone from his home in Parkland. “But at least I’m doing something with my misery. I’m using my sadness to prevent others going through the same situation.”
Written and performed by Oliver, co-written by James Clements and directed by Michael Cotey, Guac has played in various US cities and arrives in Washington on 25 January – less than a week after the inauguration of Donald Trump, a fierce ally of the gun lobby in a country where 327 people are shot every day.
Oliver, 57, had been giving speeches about gun safety at rallies and other events but these were necessarily limited to only a few minutes. Theatre, he realised, could give him an hour or more and command an audience’s attention. Reactions to the 90-minute piece have been entirely positive.
“The show empowers people,” he says. “Some parents probably relate to me and might think well, if he can do that maybe I can do something. So there is a lot of hope in the reaction from the audience.
“This is not a sad play. I have always prioritised the 17 years that Joaquin was here and not the six minutes that it took for a killer to end his life. This is more about a beautiful story of a kid, his family, how we came to this country looking for a safer and better future and then found that we were wrong. We didn’t go over all possibilities and here we are now paying the price.”
Oliver, his wife Patricia and their two children were all born in Venezuela but grew concerned by the country’s worsening social and political climate. They emigrated to America 21 years ago, starting from scratch but working hard and finding their way. By 2018 Oliver had a job as a creative director in the music industry and felt like he was living the American dream.
He recalls: “It was a perfect life. At least that’s what I thought. I used to ride my motorcycle all the way to the office and come back to my house and hang out with my son. We were like best friends. We had a lot of fun.
“He loved music; I do also. We were able to exchange music tastes. I told him about the Ramones and the Sex Pistols and the Clash. He would tell me about Jay-Z and Frank Ocean. We would learn from each other’s tastes. He was a very athletic dude and would play almost every single sport. I don’t so that was another thing to learn.”
Joaquin loved American football and soccer. Oliver continues: “I had always been aware of the Premier League. I lived in Manchester when I was a kid myself. He always wanted go to England so I could bring him to Manchester and we’d go and see some soccer games and that never happened. He didn’t have time for that.
“Joaquin was a very sharp kid, smart, a very good looking human being. He also was a great writer. He loved poetry. Oh, my God, what a loss. It’s not only that I miss Joaquin. It’s terrible that no one else is going to be able to hang out with him. It’s a real shame.”
When Oliver turns to the events of 14 February 2018, he begins with some important context. “The day that Joaquin was murdered happened 370,000 victims ago. It was not an isolated event and it didn’t stop that day. That’s something to be very concerned about.”
Oliver dropped his son off at school on what was Valentine’s Day. “He was bringing flowers to his girlfriend. We got to the school, he gave me a hug, he gave me a kiss, we said goodbye, he walked away from the car and I asked him to call me so I could learn how the day went. That was the last time that I was able to speak with my son – the last time that I saw him alive. I saw him again – dead – in the funeral home.”
Oliver went to the office as usual. At around 1.30pm he received a call from Patricia, telling him that there was an “active shooter” situation at their son’s school. He Googled for further details and drove to the school as fast as he could.
He continues: “The whole area was blocked by the police. You could tell that something very frightening was happening. You could see the kids running out from the school. You could see the kids forming lines: they will meet with their parents. It’s a totally chaotic situation that I would not desire for my worst enemy.”
Oliver and his wife were plunged into purgatory as they awaited news. Mass shootings are so common in the US that there is a formal protocol. “It’s a total nightmare that starts not only when you know but when you’re wondering if your kid is one of the victims.”
Finally, some 14 hours after he had dropped Joaquin off at school, Oliver learned that his son had been killed by the gunman. “That’s the moment that breaks your life in two. Anything before that has a little hope, like he should be fine, we’re going to find him, why is this happening to him? It’s not true. I will not accepting this reality.
“Then when you finally know it then that hope vanishes and now you’re in this new situation where where you don’t want to be and you don’t even understand. Your whole life changes. It’s incredible that I can talk about this right now and it’s incredible that I can put it on a stage so others will will know about it. But it’s also more incredible that it continues to happen. We’re not we’re not offended enough. We’re not mad enough about this.”
It has become an absurd ritual for Republican politicians to offer their “hopes and prayers” after mass shootings and insist this is not time for politics, while Democrats and activists call for action to stem a gun violence epidemic that has killed more Americans in the past 50 years than all the wars in US history.
In 2022 Joe Biden signed into law the first major gun safety legislation passed by Congress in nearly 30 years. But at a White House ceremony he was heckled by Oliver, wearing a shirt with his son’s photo and a message demanding change. Oliver and his wife were arrested after disrupting a congressional hearing on gun regulations the following year.
Oliver has had it with politicians. “This is not about being a part of the Democratic party or the Republican party. There is no political ideology here that makes people kill others. This is a cultural thing. In the United States we glorify guns. It’s like being proud of having weapons. We have more weapons than people. Politicians are part of that culture.
“I do know that some political ideologies are more conservative and more aligned with gun culture but, at the end of the day, we had other kinds of politicians in power. We had the blue party taking control of the House and Senate and the red party the same thing and then we had a Black president. Then we have a very Republican president elected for the next four years and none of them have been able to solve the problem.”
He adds: “So I don’t think politicians are able to solve this problem. It’s not a political answer that I’m expecting here. I’m expecting our society to evolve enough to understand. It’s happening with a huge number of young Americans that are more concerned about the things that really matter: climate change, gay rights, women’s rights and also gun violence.”
Oliver wants to be part of that solution. “That’s my only option here. I cannot be a regular father anymore so I have to be that father that is bringing his own voice on stage then I’ll do it. I’m happy to do it. I’d rather do that than just pass the day and be OK with it. I’m not OK with it.”
Oliver and his wife founded Change the Ref, which aims to help young people speak out against gun violence and vote out politicians who take National Rifle Association money. The nonprofit will present activist works of art and sculpture in the lobby of the Woolly Mammoth theatre during the run of Guac.
Oliver’s interventions have also included travelling to the sites of other school shootings in a retrofitted school bus, unfurling a picture of his son on a 150-ft-high crane near the White House and mounting a year-long art installation featuring 22 murals, sculptures, 3D printed likenesses and paintings of Joaquin all over the country.
It was not what he expected when he immigrated two decades ago. Oliver has US citizenship and, despite his loss and Trump’s xenophobic agenda, remains committed to the country. He reflects: “We travel a lot. I love to go to London and I would love to move to Madrid but I have a very heavy reason to stay here and that’s the fact my son was shot and killed here.
“I refuse to stop being his dad. In other words, I lost Joaquin but Joaquin hasn’t lost me yet. I’m still here breathing and I have to be here breathing so I can do things like this show.”
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Guac runs from 25 January to 16 February at Woolly Mammoth in Washington. The run will also feature a special performance falling on the anniversary of the Parkland shooting on 14 February
