Manuel Oliver’s one-man show, “Guac,” honors his son, Joaquín, 17, killed in the 2018 Parkland shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The Venezuelan immigrant uses drawings and storytelling to transform his grief into a call for stricter gun laws at the Kirk Douglas Theatre.

With his wife, Patricia, Oliver founded Change the Ref to raise awareness about mass shootings and empower the next generation of activists.

The image of a grieving parent is not an uncommon sight on the dramatic stage. Euripides, whom Aristotle called “the most tragic of the poets,” returns to the figure of the grief-stricken parent in “Hecuba,” “Hippolytus” and “The Bacchae,” to cite just a few disparate examples of characters brought to their knees by the death of their child.

Shakespeare offers what

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