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Toward the end of August, 2001 I was visiting a friend in NYC.  She had an internship for the summer so I went out and visited, saw some shows and walked around.

Ever since I was a kid, New York City held some sort of magic for me.  I don’t know if it was due to the fact that it was the complete opposite of the small town I grew up in or if it was because so many of my favorite films seem to take place there.  One day, while my friends went to some exhibit at a museum, I hopped the train and became a typical tourist.  I had been there before but I loved walking through the village and going to battery park to see the Statue of Liberty (I had been up in it once….it takes forever so this time I decided against taking the ferry.  I went to the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center before rejoining my friends.

A few weeks later was 9-11.  I remember waking up and seeing that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.  Naively I wondered why they were focusing on it.  Planes had hit buildings before and the news reports were fairly vague.  My phone rang and a friend asked me if I was watching the news…that’s when the second plane hit.

We all have stories about where we were and what we were feeling that day.  We all have the images etched into our minds…the debris and dust…the firefighters…the news reports…the growing list of missing people…as the years pass it all becomes one huge blur and, even though we remember it,  it becomes an anecdote..”Where were you?”, or “I had a friend in NYC that day who says”..

I think that’s what drew me to WTC View.  9-11 happens right before the curtain opens so, by default it is a 9-11 play.  However, it’s much more personal than that.  It details what it was like to live in the wake of such a monumental disaster.  It’s not a story about firefighters or politics.  It’s a story of a group of people trying to come to grips with unspeakable tragedy and still move on while remaining whole. It immediately takes the audience back and helps them remember.

 


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