After the Fall

Three thousand people at work and on vacation are killed one morning. Many of them die trying to rescue strangers or assist coworkers or overpower their assailants, or by plunging 90 stories from a window. Several perish with their spouse or sibling, or leave behind a pregnant wife.

Unfortunately, the best fiction about September 11th was written as fact on that day. What could a playwright make up that would be more shocking, more heartbreaking, more terrifying or more heroic than what actually happened?

This has not deterred the myriad playwrights and theatrical producers who have contributed—in sizable numbers, recently—to a new genre known as "9/11 plays." But I believe it may be one of the reasons that none of these plays is unanimously regarded as both an eloquent record of, or reflection on, the disaster and a timeless piece of theater. Can this monumentally dramatic event be further dramatized successfully?

Virtually all 9/11 plays have received mixed reviews, or mostly negative notices. Some, regardless of critical reception, have flopped commercially. Portraits lasted only two weeks after opening at the Union Square Theatre on Sept. 21, and the autobiographical one-man opus That Day in September didn't even play out its limited summer run at Lambs Theatre in midtown. Off-Broadway's Omnium Gatherum received some glowing reviews, but still posted a closing notice just six weeks after opening on Sept. 25. The 9/11 shows that did sell out—The Guys, which opened 12 weeks after the terrorist attacks, and The Mercy Seat, produced by MCC last winter—were star vehicles.

 

After experiencing about a dozen shows inspired by September 11th, I'm starting to suspect that the fault lies not in the plays themselves but in the source material. It seems to lead playwrights down cliché-strewn or unattainably ambitious paths.

Dramatists have generally taken one of three routes with their September 11th efforts: play on our sympathies, mold a metaphor or get political. With the middle option—seen in the much-maligned Recent Tragic Events and the Fringe Festival's Mo(u)rning—you get plays that are at best abstruse and at worst exploitative. With sentimental and political plays, you end up hearing points of view that, no matter how much they rouse us, have become hackneyed. The dinner guests in Omnium Gatherum, for instance, include such ideologically predictable types as a vegan feminist, a noble Arab scholar and a flag-waving boor.

By now even the most poignant stories are too familiar. The fictional characters in the monologue compilation Portraits include a widow angry about her husband's death until she meets the mother of a man he saved, an out-of-towner searching for a way to reach out to New Yorkers, and a paramedic who thought the 11th was going to be his day off. It would have been a lot more moving if we hadn't already heard such tales on umpteen episodes of Dateline NBC.

Playwright Richard Willett tried something different with 9/10, which was given a reading earlier this month at Ensemble Studio Theatre's annual Octoberfest of new works (EST had featured John Guare's 9/11-themed one-act, Woman at a Threshold, Beckoning, in its Spring Marathon). Willett set his play before the momentous day. Still, the scenarios it depicts—a young couple on the brink of a life-altering event, two antagonists warming to each other, the perpetually dissatisfied learning to carpe diem, a last-minute decision that kept someone out of (or put someone in) harm's way—are also among the leitmotifs of September 11th.

In the 9/11 theater we've seen so far, few casts of characters are complete without a firefighter (usually doomed, usually very outerborough-ish) and a peaceable Muslim pleading for tolerance. Even the cheating hubby of Internet legend, who was in bed with his mistress instead of at his desk in the World Trade Center, has made it into both Portraits and The Mercy Seat.

 

Possibly because they're aware of the overfamiliarity of victim/survivor stories, some playwrights opt to treat September 11th as a metaphor more than a plot point. Craig Wright's Recent Tragic Events—which just completed a month-long run at Playwrights Horizons—made it a jumping-off point for a debate on free will versus fate, and thus interspersed a romance between two people who meet on Sept. 12, 2001, with such surreal elements as a sock-puppet character, a faux stage manager and a retractable set. It came off as overcooked and inappropriate (and did anyone actually believe an audience member's flip of the coin was going to determine which script was used for that performance?). Mo(u)rning, by Adrian Rodriguez, was set at a Ground Zero-type disaster site but was intended as an exploration of human frailty rather than a narrative about rescue workers, TV viewers or those trapped beneath the rubble (those were the three groups of characters portrayed). However, its message was muddled, and the action—or lack thereof—grew tedious.

Some of the most insufferable moments in the 9/11 plays I've seen traffic in the widely spread myth that September 11th transformed every New Yorker from churlish and self-involved to a gentle and conciliatory soul. This cliché—fallacious on both ends—showed up in Unnatural Acts, an off-off-Broadway production from last spring subtitled "Seven Journeys Into the American Heart of Darkness," and The Service Project, the Drilling Company's response to the tragedy, performed in 2002.

Despite the magnitude of September 11th, perhaps all the attention from playwrights and producers is unwarranted. It was, after all, one day. What truly memorable, landmark plays were inspired by other single-day events in our history: Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the stock market crash in 1929, the day Kennedy was assassinated…?

The real-life event that's probably most comparable, since it occurred more recently in history and, like 9/11, had a disproportionate impact on New York City, would be the AIDS crisis. It generated a quick, prolific response by playwrights, which resulted in such acclaimed—and diverse—works as As Is, The Normal Heart and Jeffrey, among others. Nothing of this quality has yet emerged from the 9/11 cadre.

The best-reviewed 9/11 play to this point is probably the first, The Guys by Anne Nelson (the movie version is now out on DVD). It is well-constructed and touching—and to the author's credit, concise—although it might not be as impressive were it written today, when some of its sentiments are not so new.

 

Neil LaBute's The Mercy Seat is courageous enough to deal with a nonheroic reaction, but ultimately it's less a September 11th tale than yet another ugly salvo in the battle of the sexes by the alarmingly misanthropic LaBute. Perhaps, though, more dramatists should consider the underbelly of 9/11. We know the tragedy has led to opportunism by politicians, attorneys and entrepreneurs, and we can safely assume there were strained marriages and other relationships that were further complicated by September 11th…these would at least be relatively fresh perspectives for 9/11 plays.

My personal favorite of the 9/11 plays I've seen is WTC View, which was featured in this year's Fringe Festival. Written by Brian Sloan, it centers on a Soho resident's encounters with the people who respond to a roommate-wanted ad placed on Sept. 10, 2001. I realize my feelings about the play are influenced by having had a similar experience as the main character: I too watched the disaster from a close distance (I was working three blocks away that day), and though I wasn't physically threatened, I later discovered that New Yorkers who didn't live or work downtown couldn't fully relate to our trauma. I also liked that instead of being allegorical or heavily philosophical, Sloan simply depicts New Yorkers soldiering on under the weight of seemingly insurmountable grief. In addition, he captures an interesting consequence of the attacks: that for many, just discussing—with acquaintances or strangers—what they did that day was part of their post-9/11 bonding or recovery.

This summer also saw the New York premiere of Jumpers, a drama written collaboratively by members of Eastcheap Rep, who performed it as part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival. Jumpers had been one of several 9/11 shows in the 2002 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it was well-received. In the play, a young man named Joe remains haunted by the people he saw fall to their deaths from the upper levels of the Twin Towers (hence the title). This most horrific image from September 11th offers a potentially riveting focus for a play, but Jumpers revolves more around Joe's family and friends, and their story was riddled with clumsy dialogue and unconvincing character development.

Outside of the summer theater festivals, many other 9/11 plays have been done off-off-Broadway. They include The Bomb, a politically pointed series of vignettes by the experimental International WOW Company; the one-woman show My September, which has also run in L.A.; and "Everything's Back to Normal in New York City!" Below Canal: A Work in Progress, which was created from interviews with witnesses and performed during the summer at HERE. Bow Down was produced last April at La MaMa, which had been home in the fall and winter of 2001-02 to comedian Reno's rant Rebel Without a Pause. A small midtown company called the Theatre-Studio, Inc. has presented four 9/11 one-acts. Now Naked Angels Theater Company is workshopping a play called Break, about workers at Ground Zero. New 9/11 plays are also on their way to higher-profile theaters.

Many playwrights who deal with September 11th do so out of an urge to "do something" in the wake of the tragedy. But the most powerful theatrical response I've seen was not technically a "9/11 play." In the spring of 2002, the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church Theatre Fellowship (which produces Equity showcases) postponed its plans for a revival of Steel Magnolias in favor of The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder's 1942 homage to human resilience. Watching the archetypal Antrobus family—standing in for the entire human race—survive calamities from the Great Flood to the Great Depression, I couldn't imagine a more entertaining or insightful tribute to 9/11. "Every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger," Mr. Antrobus says. "All I ask is the chance to build new worlds..."

We're still waiting for a new 9/11 play to convey so eminently the spirit and lessons of September 11th.

Photos (from top): Heather Graham, Jesse J. Perez and Hamish Linklater in Recent Tragic Events; Michael Urie and Nick Potenzieri in WTC View; Molly Kidder and Philip Easley in Jumpers.