‘This is our reality’: How the one-man show “GUAC” turns grief into action

What do you do when you lose a son? What do you do when you lose a son to gun violence? Through powerful storytelling, Manuel Oliver’s one-man show, GUAC, seeks to answer this question while keeping the memory of his son alive. 

On Valentine’s Day 2018, a mass shooter shot and killed 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. One of the victims was Oliver’s youngest son, Joaquin Oliver, known to his friends as Guac.

But Oliver’s “GUAC” is about much more than the circumstances of his son’s death. “GUAC”is the story of Joaquin, a boy who loved sports, “The Godfather” trilogy, and pizza with bacon on top.

Throughout the play, Oliver reenacts key moments shared with his son: the first time he took Joaquin to the movie theater to watch Toy Story, the joy in Joaquin’s eyes when they watched his favorite guitarist live and the day he helped Joaquin choose Valentine’s Day flowers for Tori (Joaquin’s girlfriend), one day before the 17-year-old boy suffered four gunshot wounds. 

These memories, narrated with love and humor, bring Joaquin to life on stage. Oliver’s storytelling is so vivid and heartfelt that the audience feels as if they knew Joaquin personally by the end of the play. With a delicate balance of warmth and sorrow, Oliver transforms grief into a call for action.

“The play is a compilation of things that happened in our life, and we just share those things,” says Oliver in a phone interview. “There is no such a thing as a process for writing, suffering and trying to make this in the most strategic way that will impact people.”

Joaquin was a teenager, like everyone once was. By narrating the childhood and adolescence of his son, Oliver communicates a simple message: anyone can die from a gunshot wound inside an American classroom.

In “GUAC,” Oliver challenges short-term solutions to school shootings, saying they are simply not enough. He humors the idea of shooting drills. In the U.S., he opines, students study World War II, learn how to balance chemical equations, read classic literature and practice tactics to survive an active shooter.

In 2024, the K-12 School Shooting Database recorded 331 school shootings around the country, the second highest number on record since it started keeping records in 1966. The highest number of school shootings, 349, took place the previous year in 2023.

Oliver argues that due to government inaction and gun industry greed, school shootings have become a reality, normalized as part of American culture. To break this cycle, Oliver says the first step is to stop glorifying guns, a narrative that serves the gun industry.

“There is no way that an advanced nation decides to glorify guns to enrich knowledge or culture,” says Oliver. “I think [it’s the gun industry’s strategy] so we will depend on them more.”

The gun manufacturing industry generates a total of $9 billion in revenue annually, according to a 2021 report by the market research firm IBISWorld.

As per a statement issued by the United States Joint Economic Committee in 2022, “Gun companies are earning record profits at the expense of human lives… The windfall for gunmakers is occurring at the same time that firearm deaths, gun injuries and mass shootings are increasing.”

During his first month in office, however, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle gun control, asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to review and potentially roll back some Biden-era gun control policies, including ghost gun regulations and expanded background checks.

Oliver argues that measures such as shooting drills, arming professors or metal detectors in front of schools fail to address the root cause of gun violence.

“Instead of trying to prevent the shootings from happening, we decided that we could put some solutions like that one, which is far from being a solution,” adds Oliver. “[We’re] just accepting the broken system we have.”

At one moment in the play, Oliver asks those who wish to take action against violence to buy a t-shirt from his NGO Change the Ref, which was founded after Joaquin’s death. But now that all chambers of power are controlled by Republicans, who have long defended the gun industry, I ask if Oliver thinks buying a t-shirt is enough in the face of an all-Republican government.

Oliver responds that the call to buy a t-shirt is a symbolic plea, a way to spark conversations about gun violence and keep the issue in the public eye. He emphasizes that while buying a t-shirt won’t solve the problem, it serves as a first step in engaging people with the cause and increasing the demand for action.

“What happened to my son is a common thing that we have been able to normalize at this point,” says Oliver. “If we get people to talk about this, to put it out there, to make it a priority, to just reject [this idea]… that’s what I mean by signing on [with] any of these organizations. Then you can be part of the solution and not the problem.”

Change the Ref has legislative goals, such as banning assault weapons like AR-15s, raising the minimum gun purchasing age to 21 and advocating for safe storage laws that would require states to have gun owners safely lock up their firearms.

Oliver calls these proposals “basic, common sense and common ground solutions. Why are we even fighting against these ideas?”

Oliver moved with his wife Patricia and two kids, Joaquin and Andrea, from Venezuela to Parkland, Florida. In “GUAC,” Oliver explains they moved countries to provide a better life and more opportunities for their children.

Hola Cultura asked whether Oliver regretted moving to the U.S., a country that has experienced a higher number of public mass shootings compared to any other nation worldwide, according to research by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. 

“Not really. I did at some point. It was not helping at all to move forward. There are a lot of things from this country that I love, and there are a lot of things from this country that Joaquin loved and enjoyed and shaped his personality. So I can tell you that Joaquin was a very, very happy young man here. He loved everything from this great nation,” says Oliver, repeating a phrase from the play.

Joaquin might not have become the boy he was had the Oliver family not moved to the U.S., his father muses, and who would have wanted to change him? He was a boy who loved sports, pizza with bacon on top, the show “Family Guy” and — most importantly — life.

During our interview, Oliver said this is a different way of parenting, but parenting nonetheless, as “this is our reality.” “GUAC” keeps the memory of Joaquin alive while looking out for children around the country who fear for their lives inside an American classroom.

“GUAC” closes Sunday, Feb. 16, at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Tickets are available on the theater’s website.

* This story has been updated to correct the name of Joaquin’s girlfriend, Tori.

– Story by Lori Rampani

– Copy edited by Michelle Benitez