Teen playwrights say their piece on gun violence

by Mesgana Waiss, Mirror Indy
October 1, 2025

At 16, Pace Rundlett is already a playwright with an award-winning script on a national tour.

It was after watching a play about Peter Pan that the student writer envisioned herself pursuing a career in theater.

“Being in the experience of one of these plays and then being an observer from the audience was super cool,” she said. “I just thought to myself, what would it be like to put a cast together and put it on stage?”

The 11th grader’s work is coming to Indianapolis as part of this year’s ENOUGH! Plays to End Gun Violence, a national program that uses theater and community engagement to confront the issue of gun violence.

She learned about the program at a competition with her high school theater troupe.

“My theater teacher tapped me on the shoulder in the award ceremony and she was like, ‘You should enter into that.’”

So, the Clinton, Miss., native submitted “We Didn’t Have to Meet Here,” to ENOUGH! in April. The 10-minute play follows four different stories of people who are affected by gun violence.

Little did she know, Rundlett would be selected as one of six winners out of 127 playwrights. The competition was judged by a panel of more than 70 theater professionals and a separate selection committee.

For the competition, Rundlett wanted to explore different types of gun violence to show how close to home the topic can be for people beyond the horrors of school shootings.

“I hope it’s a reminder that this could happen to anyone,” she said. “A school, in a grocery store, stepping out of your car, your loved ones struggling with a silent battle. It’s not just one or the other, it’s all of these stories. It’s an ongoing battle that won’t end unless we do something.”

Art for making change

Michael Coety founded ENOUGH! in 2019. He said he was inspired by the Parkland school shooting in 2018, when a teen gunman killed 17 students and staff. The program aims to bring people together from across the country, using plays written by young people to spark conversations about gun violence prevention.

“These plays cut straight to the heart of what it means to grow up in America today,” Cotey said in a statement. “It is an urgent issue impacting this generation and this space can be a useful vehicle for confronting the issue and inspiring meaningful action and, hopefully, change.”

The topic of gun violence is one that Rundlett thinks about often. She also has family members who own guns.

“It’s a very hard conversation when it comes to taking away Second Amendment rights. But, there needs to be more control and guidelines when you’re holding such a powerful weapon,” she said.

Through ENOUGH!, Rundlett and other teens have attended workshops with professional writers to improve their scripts. This weekend she will travel to Atlanta to watch a reading of “We Didn’t Have to Meet Here,” from the audience for the first time.

“I’m so excited to hear it read and to meet the fellow writers face to face. We’ve been talking a lot, we have a group chat, and they are just the most amazing people,” Rundlett said.

Her play will also be read at events across the country, including in Indianapolis. You can catch a show by American Lives Theatre at Phoenix Theatre, plus readings at Indy Art Center and The Success Center.

This article first appeared on Mirror Indy and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.