May 4th Voices

May 4th Voices brings together first-person narratives about the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State University, and includes more than 115 interviews with National Guardsmen, students, townspeople and politicians. The interviews capture the sense of trauma, confusion and fear felt by people who witnessed or were involved with the May 4 shootings at KSU.

First performed in 2010 in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the shootings, May 4th Voices is composed of verbatim excerpts from the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, except for the voice of the narrator, Maj Ragain, who recites excerpts from his prose poem “May 4, 1970 / A Memory.” Ragain was a graduate student on campus that day and now teaches creative writing at KSU and in the Kent community.

May 4th Voices was originally funded and produced at Kent State University with additional support by various local arts and sciences departments, including the Wick Poetry Center and the School of Theatre and Dance. Axiom Repertory Theatre is proud to be staging the West Coast premier of this timely and important play whose relevance is perhaps more important today that when these events shook the world just over fifty years ago. (Produced by special arrangement from Kent University Press.)