Dangerous Instruments
World Premiere in South Florida
By: Aaron Krause - May 29, 2025
The determined and desperate mom in playwright and educator Gina Montet’s new play, Dangerous Instruments, shakes with despair. With her hand to her head, she leans against a school administrator’s desk. She thrusts out her hand, palm up, like a helpless beggar pleading for assistance… any support.
“There is a darkness inside my child that I can’t reach,” she says, her voice taut with emotional pain. “I can feel it taking over. I am so scared that soon… my Daniel… will be gone. He is just a child – and he is screaming with every inch of his soul, ‘somebody save me.’”
The people to whom this poor mother turns—therapists, educators, law enforcement officials—may very well want to help. But in the end, they are part of a broken system seemingly destined to fail certain individuals. And Daniel, brilliant, talented, yet troubled, is one of them.
Dangerous Instruments, a tragedy that is hard to watch—but one we must witness—is receiving its world premiere staging in a devastatingly realistic professional production. It runs through June 1 at Palm Beach Dramaworks’ intimate space on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach.
It is a shame that the run lasts only about a week. Hopefully the piece will receive many more productions so that as many people as possible will be impacted by its urgent messages.
While the piece offers no easy answers, it forces us to confront issues that are here to stay. And it humanizes Daniel, a young man who, sadly, too often becomes just another statistic. We also get a sense of what it is like to love someone with special needs.
PBD’s powerful production, sensitively directed by Margaret M. Ledford, features performers at the top of their game. One cast member, Savannah Faye, makes her PBD and professional debut here—but from her nuanced and heartbreaking performance as Daniel’s mother, you would think she were a seasoned veteran. With spontaneity, emotional precision, and seemingly endless energy, Faye brings Laura Hammond to life as a tireless, devoted Mother Bear of a parent — one willing to do anything for her child.
Faye and Matt Stabile—who sympathetically plays Paul, an educator nicknamed “Cool Mr. P.”—are the only cast members portraying a single character. The others—Jessica Farr, Bruce Linser, and Maha McCain—deftly shift between roles, playing everyone from social workers to other parents, educators, and police officers. In addition, behind-the-scenes artists help bring the world of the play realistically to life. They include scenic designer Samantha Pollack, costume designer Brian O’Keefe, lighting designer Dylan B. Carter, sound designer Roger Arnold, and projection designer Adam J. Thompson.
Throughout the roughly 90-minute production, Daniel, whom we never see or hear, ages from 4 to 14. At the top of each scene, a projection screen flashes his age. As the action plays out, a chill runs through your body as you realize that the play may be hurtling toward a nightmarish conclusion.
The video design by Thompson is useful in more than one way. For instance, at different points in the play, the people to whom Hammond turns for help speak during interviews about their experience trying to help Daniel – and their work in general. We intuit that they are speaking sometime in the future. These apparently videotaped interviews, together with the impressively realistic live performances, lend the action a documentary-like feel.
Listen to one of these support people talk about the broken system.
“When millions of kids have the same needs — those needs can no longer be classified as ‘special.’ Everybody has something. ‘Normal’ children are a fairy tale. So, let’s use our classrooms to create a generation of human beings who know how to take care of each other. And it starts here. Practice your math skills and your coping skills. Share your toys. Share your feelings. Talk about your anger, your fear, your trauma, your pain. Give up the goddamned secret before it kills you! It’s over. Damage is done. And we’re left, once again to make sense of the mess we’ve made. No. I am not a hero. Not even close.”
Speaking of heroes, Montet’s play does not place the characters on a pedestal. But neither does she demonize any of the people whose lives intersect with Daniel’s. There are no villains in this piece.
Clearly, Daniel is a complex person. He is a tragic figure, as is his mother. In fact, at times you wish for Daniel to appear in the flesh. This would humanize the boy even more than the playwright manages to. But including Daniel as an onstage character might have required PBD to cast multiple child actors to play him at different ages. This is not always possible. And, so, we learn about Daniel through anecdotes his mom shares. We come to love him and fear for him, even as we wrestle with the consequences of his actions.
In the brutally honest “Dangerous Instruments,” Montet holds nothing back while portraying a system that needs major repair. And she does not overwhelm us with statistics or unfamiliar jargon. Fortunately, the playwright includes humor in just the right places to keep this dark drama from becoming too depressing or overwhelming. For example, at one point, Daniel’s mother is with another mom of three boys. The two women are waiting for a meeting and discussing raising children.
CLAIRE I know exactly what you mean. Thirteen is the new thirty. They’ve got social media profiles, followers, accounts sponsors, coaches – brand deals!
LAURA And the girls especially – Is it me, or do they seem so much more put together than we were back then?
CLAIRE So true. They’re all about skin care routines, hydrating and aesthetics. Oh, and iced coffee – at twelve!
LAURA It’s like Toys R Us closed and Sephora and Starbucks swooped right in.
CLAIRE And they’re way more confident than I was at that age. No fear at all. Remember being intimidated by adults when you were a kid?
LAURA Terrified! I was scared to ask for ketchup at a restaurant.
CLAIRE Not anymore! They’ll say anything right to your face. Like, this morning my youngest actually announced at breakfast that I had a ‘big ass’ – The little turd.
LAURA What did you do?
CLAIRE I told him that carrying three ungrateful assholes in my uterus for nine months are why I have a big ass and I’m not sure it was worth it.
In addition to humor, Montet includes lighthearted, innocent moments that contrast markedly with the dark and serious subject matter. For instance, we hear a child’s voice giving announcements over the school intercom. These moments endear us to the world of children and remind us what is at stake. We wish they could remain innocent — shielded from trauma and tragedy they should never have to face.
In interview excerpts published in the program, Montet says that she wanted to write a play that focused not on the aftermath of violence, but on the events that lead us there.
“I wanted to tell the story of what happens before; what brings us to that point, and what factors led up to it? We’re all very familiar with the aftermath, unfortunately, and as a parent and a teacher, I wanted to bring a different perspective that includes the frustrations on both sides of the story…That’s where I was coming from: those moments when parents have to fight for their kids with people who aren’t necessarily the enemy, but who, for whatever reason, aren’t able to do what you need them to do.”
Art often has the power to make us wrestle with hard truths, and Dangerous Instruments is a perfect example.
A play such as this asks us not to just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. Instead, we might lean forward, engage with the material, empathize, consider the piece’s relevance to our own lives, and take action. We owe it to our youth to give them every chance to succeed.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Palm Beach Dramaworks’ world premiere professional production of Gina Montet’s Dangerous Instruments.
WHEN: Through June 1. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and 2 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. Post-performance discussions follow Wednesday and Thursday matinees.
WHERE: Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St. in West Palm Beach.
TICKETS: $92. Student tickets for $15 with a valid K-12 or university/college ID, and anyone under 40 pays $40 (no additional fees) with a photo ID. Tickets for educators and active military are half price with proper ID (other restrictions apply). Call (561) 514-4042, ext. 2 or go to www.palmbeachdramaworks.org.