BWW Interviews: RISING & FALLING: Where were you on 9/11?

Do you remember where you were on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 - the day terror was brought home to us and our world was change irrevocably? Throughout our lives we all experience those events that will remain etched forever in our minds, the ones that will always be in our personal memory banks.

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 fast approaching, Nashville's Rhubarb Theater Company presents the debut of playwright Valerie Hart's Rising & Falling, running August 12-20 at Darkhorse Theatre. Hart describes Rising & Falling as "a play about art set against one of the largest tragedies of our time."

"As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I want Rhubarb to have a voice in the community, acknowledging these pivotal events in our lives, but I didn't want it to be a rehashing of the attacks on our country," says Trish Crist, artistic director for Rhubarb, who directs the play. "Val's play is challenging, beautiful, and very thought-provoking around a key aspect of 9/11 that has nothing to do with terrorists."

As final rehearsals get under way in advance of opening night, members of the cast and crew of Rising & Falling reached into their own memory banks to let us know where they were on that fateful morning, which gives perspective to the play they're working on together to bring to life for a Nashville audience.

Katie Veglio (stage manager) I was in my junior year in high school and during my summer vacation I had been to New York and taken several pictures on top of the Empire State Building with my friends having the World Trade Center in the background. When we left first period the hallways were buzzing that a plane had hit the first building. When we got to second period, Economics, the teacher chose to teach rather than let us watch the footage. Looking back now I realize what a great education he was providing us teaching us about economics in the 50s rather than showing us the footage and explaining to us what an impact this sort of attack would have on us.

By the time I left 2nd period I could tell that what happen was more than just a random accident. The teachers let us watch the footage in every class the rest of the day. As stupid teenagers we couldn't understand the severity of the attacks, but I will never forget watching the news and looking out in the hallway to see a group of teachers whispering with pained looks on their faces. Many of them in tears. I remember feeling scared and upset because that was the feeling the teachers and other administrators were portraying but not fully understanding why I was supposed to feel this way other than I knew many Americans had died. I remember thinking that as a 16 year old girl, the people jumping from the building I had just stood in front of not 2 months earlier was the scariest and saddest thing I had ever seen. 

Brian Hill (actor) It's curious how difficult it is to write even a short statement about the morning of September 11.

I had just pulled back into my driveway, after having dropped the younger kids off at school.  I was about to turn off the ignition, when, on the radio, one of the guys from the Bob and Tom Showmade a light hearted comment about some idiot, (probably) amateur pilot hitting the North Tower.  I came inside, immediately turned on the Today Show, and watched the whole thing play out, seeing the second plane crash into the South Tower minutes later.

Time stopped.  This was my home town.  I knew people who worked in the Towers, and had relatives who worked within a block or two of what would become known as "Ground Zero."  We had been at the towers the previous Labor Day weekend for a family wedding, and had a hauntingly beautiful picture - already on the refrigerator - of our eight year old twin daughters photographed from the Ellis Island ferry stop looking north, the towers visible in the background, through an early morning mist 

I don't clearly remember grabbing my car keys and leaving the house.  I drove to four different schools, picked up my five children and brought them back to the house.  I had an almost visceral need to have my children around me as I tried repeatedly to break through the "all circuits are busy now" phone recordings to reach family and friends in New York.  I think I sat in my chair in the TV room until 8 or 9 the next morning.

I didn't break free from the initial horror for weeks.  I rarely left the house that first week.  Even going outside was problematic, as I kept looking up with fear at beautiful blue skies totally void of any jet plumes due to the total airport shutdowns.

Trish Crist (director) I was living in Pulaski, Tennessee, my hometown, translating in my window-filled home office, listening to music, happy. My friend, a reporter, Claudia Johnson called me and said something terrible was happening in New York and for me to turn on the TV.

I did and simultaneously called my boyfriend who lived in Nashville. Fred had gone to NYU and had many friends still in the city. I instructed him to turn on the TV, too and we hung up. He joined me at my house shortly thereafter and we both attempted to call friends who could have been in or near the towers and who worked at the Pentagon where the third plane went down.

The things I remember most about that day are the shellshock, staring, no-talking emotions, watching the footage and commentary over and over again. I also remember feeling like an outsider as people on TV and people around me, including the boyfriend to some extent, spoke with derision about the Muslims who had surely perpetrated the attacks. All I could see in my mind as people spoke of Muslims was my dear former family of inlaws from my first marriage. The Muslims I knew shared the same sweet spirituality and kindness that epitomized my late grandmother, Baptist to her core.

In my mind I saw the dusty roads around my in-laws' house in north Africa, barefoot kids playing soccer with giant smiles, women with or without scarves laughing and making jokes with me, and the gentleness of the men I knew, young and old. I saw people I loved and who loved me. In many ways I felt closer to - and defensive of - the Muslim community as a whole that was so quickly and intensely painted as crazed radicals those first 24 hours than I did to people in New York. It wasn't that I didn't care about the horrors unfolding in New York---I did. It was that the world could see that they had been wronged. People seemed not to acknowledge that the broad-sweeping statements and hate-mongering about Islam as a whole were a wrongful counter attack on thousands of the most tolerant and generous people in the world.

That made me sad to my very bones. I simply personally knew more Muslims than I did people in New York. And I knew them not to be the things being said on TV and in living rooms

Wesley Paine (actor) I was in an early-morning meeting that started at 7 a.m., unusual for me - otherwise I would have heard about it at home as it happened.  By the time the meeting ended, people in surrounding offices had heard and we got the news.  I listened to NPR coverage on my car radio as I drove to the Parthenon and heard the towers fall.  It's trite to say, I know, but it was truly unbelievable--I just sat for a while, stunned and unable to take in the magnitude of what had just happened.  It had a totally unreal quality to it, almost like the violence of a movie--happening at one remove, you know?  It took days and weeks to absorb. 

That day was the first day at work for the new director of Parthenon Patrons (now The Conservancy for the Parthenon and Centennial Park); she had just moved back to Nashville after 10 years in NYC, so she was devastated. That night I hosted a production meeting Oedipus the King that Gregg Colson and I were directing for ACT I; the whole production team sat glued to the TV - couldn't wrap our minds around theater at all.

Maggie Pitt (actor) I was a high school senior in Bethel, Connecticut.  That morning I was in Spanish class when another student came in late and told us that a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center.  I was still wrapping my head around the idea when we heard about the second plane hitting the other tower.

After that l still went to my scheduled classes, but none of the teachers tried to teach. Instead, we either listened to the radio or watched the news on TV, trying to process everything that was happening as we learned about the other planes and the collapse of both towers. 

Kristin McCalley (actor) On 9/11, I was in the seventh grade. When I walked into the classroom that morning my teacher seemed upset and I asked him what was wrong (I went to a very small school and was friends with my teachers). He wouldn't tell me anything other than "something devastating has happened." They called an assembly and the principal told us that two planes had crashed into the twin towers in New York. We prayed for all the people who were suffering and for the president and then we were dismissed from school for the day.

The only other thing I remember about that actual day was that I had been reading The Diary of Ann Frank. As a seventh grader, the story of a girl my age living in a time of war and terror was so foreign to me. Even though I wasn't directly affected by it, I remember 9/11 being my first realization of the fact that war and terror existed in the present.

Elizabeth Walsh (actor) I was 14 in 2001 and I remember waking up and taking a shower like any other school day and when I went in the kitchen my mom was on the phone with my Uncle talking about something really serious and then we went to turn on the TV and I saw the second tower go down. It's weird how you can witness something so historic and have no idea how important it is in that moment. We stayed glued to the TV the rest of the day and I remember having rehearsal that evening for a community theater production of Cinderella and all of us being so astounded at what happened and stopping to say a prayer before we started.

Dan Millard (actor) As far as the World Trade Center attack, I remember seeing something about a plane hitting a tower on CNN on the TV of the lobby of the building I was living in. I was running out to work, so I didn't have time to stop and watch it. I did listen to what was going on the radio on my way to work. I was running a small furniture store by myself at the time, so I just spent the day listening to the events on the radio, mostly NPR, if I remember correctly. I was concerned about my father, who was an airline captain at the time. He was ok, fortunately. His story was pretty interesting. He was actually on approach to New York when the first plane hit. He wound up getting diverted a few times, but wound up landing without incident.

Valerie Hart (playwright) I was watching in my living room in San Francisco. It was very early in the morning there and it was hard to be so far away. When the event was confirmed as terrorist attacks, I thought, "Oh no. We're going to war. He'll be a war president." Then when people started jumping from the towers I walked out of the room and reflexively started getting ready to go to work. It was like - okay stop the movie, time to return to our regular programming of normal life. I'm still waiting for that return.

 

Inspired by a real-life, the plot of Rising & Falling centers on a public arts controversy in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 where public arts funding was spent on a statue that many in the public rejected and which was removed after just eight days on display. That story and the feelings around it are told by fictitious characters who explore the questions  of who gets to decide what public art is, how much is spent on it, how a city mourns or celebrates a major event, what is acceptable art and good art, and what is the proper time-frame to acknowledge tragic events through art.

A panel discussion around these topics featuring experts and artists will follow the performance on Saturday, August 13. All tickets are $12. For reservations and further information, call (615) 397-7820, or by emailing rhubarbnashville@gmail.com.

All performances of Rising & Falling are at The Darkhorse Theater, 4610 Charlotte Avenue in Nashville, opening Friday August 12 and running through Saturday August 20. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday shows at 7:30 p.m., Sunday matinee on April 14 at  2:30 p.m. No performances on Monday or Tuesday.

Following the matinee on Sunday, August 14 at 2:30 p.m., audiences are invited to join the cast and crew at Estel Gallery for wine, networking and conversation, Crist explains. In addition, firemen, police officers, paramedics and first responders are offered tickets at a two-for-one price.

To post a comment, you must register and login.