How Two Stoneman Douglas Drama Students Wrote An Anthem To Heal Their School

the initial thing Andrea Peña did any time once she got house was sit at her piano. She had just spent nearly two hours huddled with 60 classmates in an overheated drama classroom closet while a former student, armed with a rifle, opened fire on their high school, killing 17 and wounding just as several. Peña needed to feel something — anything — other than numb. So she put her fingers to the keys and played.

Jennifer Linn’s “Rainbow Prelude” was the obvious choice. She had recently played it for a piano competition and the melody was still stuck in her head. She poured herself into that song, letting the music take over. She was furious, pounding on the keys, up until she reached the softer segment of the composition. That, she mentioned, made her feel hopeful again.

The high school sophomore has been playing piano since kindergarten. She picked up a guitar three years back. And she’s been singing for as long as she can remember. Music is more than a hobby.

“When I'm irritated about something, or as soon as I'm furious, I play the piano, or the guitar, or sing. That's just what I do," Peña, 15, told MTV News. "It's a sense of relief. That's how I deal with my emotions."

So, in the aftermath of the Feb. 14 school shooting that ravaged Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that's exactly what she and her fellow drama classmate, Sawyer Garrity, 16, did. They played. And gathered several a day or two later at Peña's residence, as some of the very same MSD drama students who survived that cramped closet painted (because "art is a good release") to the sounds of Garrity's preference Glee playlist.

The Friday soon following the shooting Garrity determined she "couldn't just sit there anymore," so she picked up her guitar and recorded a cover of Cage The Elephant's "Cigarette Daydreams"

The painting sessions were therapeutic although by Saturday, Peña knew she wanted to do something more. Yet she wasn't comfortable speaking to the press like some of her more outspoken MSD peers, and she didn't feel well-versed enough in politics to jump into the #NeverAgain fight spearheaded by her fellow drama classmate, Cameron Kasky. So she spent hours distracting herself at the piano — up until she acquired a text from Garrity, who'd been feeling equally restless: "We should write a song with each other

That, Peña could do. Or at least considered she may do it. She had never composed her own music before.

"I was thinking, 'We're certainly never going to do this,'" Garrity recalled. "And then 10 minutes later, I get another text message from Andrea, and she was like, 'So I was thinking this for the piano.' And she then sent me a voice memo of her playing."

Courtesy Andrea Peña

Garrity (far left) and Peña (far right) with their Douglas Drama troupe

a number of minutes later, Garrity sent Peña the opening verse of what would eventually become MSD's uplifting anthem, "Shine," starting with the lyric, "You, you threw my city away." Garrity's moving words, Peña mentioned, motivated her to make even more music. So, they started feverishly sending each other voice memos. Garrity would sing piece of a verse, and Peña would send her more piano chords. They met up on Monday to finish it up. "We finished the song in half a hour," Garrity mentioned.

Garrity sent the demo recording to their drama teacher, Melody Herzfeld, "because I just thought lose desire to hear it," she mentioned. So she was surprised as soon as the song brought her teacher to tears. "We were like, 'OK Herzfeld, it’s not that good,'" Garrity mentioned. Yet they had underestimated how cathartic the words "you’re not going to knock us down, we'll get back up again" could be for a community reeling from so much heartbreak — and for a campus in the midst of a gun control revolution.

Immediately after complimenting her students' cute segment of music," Herzfeld then shared the song with Florida Congressman Ted Deutch's office. The next day, Garrity obtained a call: CNN wanted them to perform the song throughout the network's televised town hall on gun control on Wednesday — as in, in much less than 24 hours. "I was like, 'What? No! We can’t! It’s not done,'" she mentioned. "I was having a mental breakdown."

However immediately after an afternoon of rehearsals, in which Peña had to track down a second piano right after she left her's at the venue, and then some help from some of their drama companions, who all had to learn the song and their spoken-word parts the day-of, Garrity and Peña were ready. Or as ready as they were ever going to be.

"The last rehearsal wasn't the perfect, and I was really nervous Once I noticed out it was going to be televised," Peña mentioned. Nevertheless as soon as we were up there, I felt a click. We all were in sync. It was the perfect I had ever played it, and it also was the perfect me and Sawyer had ever sung it."

They had no real plans for the song. They just hoped that several students and faculty members would hear it and find comfort. However that night, surrounded by the grieving faces of their community as they wept listening to their song, the duo were fully overwhelmed by the answer. "For me and Sawyer, not only was this song a way for us to heal, yet it was also for the victims," Peña mentioned. "We got to be a voice for those who did not have one anymore. That's what the song was about."

Though, they also acknowledge that the song shouldn't have needed to exist in the opening place. "We never should have sat down to write this song. The shooting at our school should have never happened," Peña mentioned.

"My dad routinely tells me, 'It’s not what occurs to you; it’s how you react,'" she added. "And I’ve been living through that. What happened was tragic, and there were days While I didn't wish to leave my room because I was so sad, although that song was such a powerful way for me and Sawyer to come with each other and show each person that although this happened we can, and we'll, remain strong."

Right now, they plan to release an official studio version of "Shine" ahead of the March For Our Lives rally in D.C. On March 24. The proceeds will go to #ShineMSD, a student-led nonprofit that the females are working on. Their mission: to inspire healing via arts and encourage those working through trauma to find a creative outlet for their pain.

At the time of the shooting, Peña, Garrity, and their drama class were rehearsing the department's annual children's show in the auditorium. Their production of Yo, Vikings! was supposed to open March 1, although it's been postponed to a later date. In the meantime, Garrity's rehearsing for the local BARCLAY Performing Arts production of Spring Awakening, in which she's starring because the lead, Wendla Bergmann, opposite her friend Kasky's precocious teen radical, Melchior Gabor.

Courtesy Sawyer Garrity

Garrity starred as Golde in Douglas Drama's production of Fiddler on the Roof, her first for MSD

As such, the Spring Awakening soundtrack has been on heavy rotation for Garrity, moreover to the original Broadway cast recordings of Next To Normal and Dear Evan Hansen. "'You Will Be Noticed has been on repeat, she mentioned. "I listen to a lot musicals. All of the musicals in the world, I’ve probably listened to almost every one."

She's also writing more music. "I write songs all of the time," she mentioned. "Writing is my outlet. Some people will call a friend and rant to their friend; I’ll pick up my guitar and rant to my guitar." Her latest: an original called "Back To You," written for the companions who have been there for her once she required them most these past few weeks.

"This thing made me notice that if I have a lyric in my head, just write it down," Garrity mentioned. "You have to live life to the fullest, so you've got to take advantage of every little idea you have and every little thought you have because you never really know what’s going to happen."

For Peña, the theater is a liberating place — free of the minutiae of everyday teen life, like stressing over homework and science tests. "Practicing and being in drama and running our numbers, and not having to worry about school for just several hours, is a way of escape," she mentioned. "Through the part I’m playing, I get to be whoever I’m playing and pretend to stay in their world."

Courtesy Andrea Peña

Peña in the school production of Fiddler on the Roof

"I feel like as soon as we're on the stage that nothing is wrong," Garrity added, "that everything is back to usual for a second."

Or, in the words of Next To Normal's anxious teenage heroine, something next to common could be OK, also.

For five ways you could take action on gun violence, head over to Everytown.Org.