Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 4 Number 3, December 2003

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The Naomi Wallace Festival and 9/11

By

Walter Bilderback

This paper addresses the way in which the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, commonly referred to in the U.S. as “9/11” (and the anthrax scare that post-dated the attacks) affected a group of theatre artists in Atlanta, GA, and how the work in which they were already engaged, the Naomi Wallace Festival, became a response to those events, both publicly and in their personal lives. It will also attempt to address, from the standpoint of mid-July, 2002, some lasting impact of the response on the theatre ecology of Atlanta. “[i]

Within the theatrical community across America, two concerns emerged as soon as the initial shock of 9/11 sank in: 1) Is the theatre still economically viable, will people want to show up for something as trivial as entertainment?  And 2) Is there any moral validity in what I am doing personally?

Within a matter of weeks or months, these questions had evaporated, often in a sense that public entertainment is justification enough.[ii] For theatres and producers whose work might be provoke thoughts and questions in the aftermath of the attacks and the ongoing rescue attempts on the World Trade Center site, an additional question arose. Columnists and radio personalities were fired for asking sensible questions, and the talk-show host Bill Maher was suspended for questioning whether men willing to fly into buildings could accurately be described as “cowardly.”[iii]

In Manhattan, theatre entrepreneurs found themselves hurrying to cancel any upcoming productions that carried a hint of controversy, such as a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, whose producers and left-liberal director rapidly issued a press release saying they were delaying the production because it was “a play that asks serious questions about American society, and now is not the place for such questions.”[iv] The most common “response” to 9/11 among American theatres was a curtain call rendition of either America the Beautiful or the National Anthem.[v]

In Atlanta, 12 different theatres had been working on the Naomi Wallace Festival, most for close to a year. Naomi Wallace’s work is centered upon a poetic and often erotic examination of American and English society that  encompasses race, sex, gender, class, and imperialism with a fervor and analysis that makes Assassins look like a somewhat pointed Saturday Night Live sketch. Two of the plays, In the Heart of America and The Retreating World, specifically stood out because both are directly concerned with the aftermath of the Gulf War—the former ties American military involvements over the past half-century to male fear of otherness; the latter is told from the standpoint of an Iraqi conscript fleeing in advance of Desert Storm, who describes some of what happened afterward that all the world it seems, with the exception of the American public, had long been aware of. Singing the National Anthem for the curtain call would have seemed addle-headed at best.

The Naomi Wallace Festival was the brainchild of Vincent Murphy, a professor at Emory University and Artistic Producing Director for Theatre Emory, the semi-professional theatre company associated with the university’s theatre program. Murphy, the most significant leader in the Atlanta theatre scene, had organized or assisted in the creation of a number of Festivals involving a range of Atlanta theatres producing the work of a single playwright simultaneously. Previous festivals had focused on established masters, living and dead, such as Athol Fugard, Samuel Beckett, Wole Soyinka, Shakespeare and Moliere, along with others focused on an Atlanta playwright’s work. (Living writers were always in attendance for some or all of the festival.) Murphy was introduced to Naomi Wallace’s work at the 1998 Humana Festival of New Plays at the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Kentucky. He was immediately struck by her theatrical “voice” and felt that the time was ripe for a festival on a living playwright of international acclaim[vi] who was “not a household name.” (In fact, none of her plays had been produced in Atlanta.)[vii]

Rehearsals for the first production had just begun on 9/11. Others were be begin within days. Some theatres’ boards, already nervous about the politics and sexuality of Wallace’s work, found new reason for concern: Was Atlanta more willing to face “serious questions about American society” than Manhattan? Almost all the theatres pressed on, however. In many cases they found strength from the work, as events in the plays gained deeper meaning as connections to the larger world presented themselves.

At Actor’s Express, where The Retreating World was already rehearsal, director Weir Harman’s immediate reaction to bombings was similar to many people’s across the country: worry about friends in New York City, then shock and anger at the deaths; “It took some time to get back to the play,” he said in a radio interview in September 2001. Harman and actor Brad Davidorff discussed dropping the production. Davidorff’s concern was that that the piece might be “anachronistic” in the changed climate.[viii]

Watching the television coverage of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the days following the attacks, the actor discovered a renewed connection to the material. Americans, Davidorff felt, had a “new vulnerability” that would allow them a greater understanding of the horrors recounted in The Retreating World. He and Harman now saw the character, a man opposed to Saddam Hussein yet conscripted into his army, as a way to humanize Arabs and Muslims at a time when dangerous stereotypes were rampant.[ix] Harman told Jennifer Deer that he found his “emotional investment” in the project soaring. “At a time when a lot of artists are questioning the value of art, I’m reminded of its clarifying value in a moment like this, when I am lucky enough to be working on a piece that is so meaningful.” [x] The production went on, although it eventually became a book-in-hand staged reading rather than a full production (Harman theorizes that this allowed Davidorff the emotional distance “he needed just to be able to do it in public”[xi]), most Festival participants shared Harman’s sense of increased importance to the work.

At PushPush Theatre, where In the Heart of America and two other plays by Naomi Wallace were in rehearsal, director Tim Haberger saw “ a reigniting of racial profiling issues and general anti-Muslim, anti-Arab feelings that were echoed in our actors' personal lives.”[xii] [One leading character was played by a young Arab-American woman, Suhayda Samir. Her “brother” the central focus of the play, was portrayed by Joshua Waterstone, a young Jewish-American.]

For the feminist Synchronicity Performance Group, which was about to begin rehearsals for Wallace’s best-known work, One Flea Spare, the events of 9/11 struck home in a different way for director, Rachel May.  May had gone to visit relatives in Boston, and found herself, on the morning of 9/11, being evacuated from Logan International Airport.[xiii] Stranded, May found new relevance in the play, set in a room of a London townhouse in 1666, where the quarantine has been extended after a runaway sailor and a young girl are caught sneaking in for shelter.[xiv] After 9/11, One Flea Spare  “took on a larger social context.”  It became a play “about an invisible enemy, and people isolating themselves to keep from getting hurt.”[xv] Actress Kathleen Wattis was struck by other parallels: “We’re all suspicious of each other and the air we breathe and the water we drink. Are we in danger?”[xvi]

For Theatre Emory, Vincent Murphy had chosen to direct Wallace’s The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, a play set in Kentucky during the Great Depression. This play stands at a greater distance from the events of 9/11, but it too felt some of the impact. Public radio producer Jennifer Deer was putting together a half-hour radio program about the Festival.[xvii] Murphy’s interview for the program was scheduled for noon on 9/11. He arrived to a scene many of us remember from that day – people wandering around in a daze, in this case watching the banks of screens present in any broadcasting building. Seeing him, Murphy said, Deer asked, “Why should we do this [the interview]?” Murphy’s response was: “We should do it now more than ever.”[xviii] On the final program, Murphy does not mention the events of the day, but his feelings perhaps show when he paints an image of utopian Platonic reconciliation in praising Wallace’s “recognition that we’re all halves of something, that we’re all much more erotic and tender and forgiving than we can allow ourselves to be.”

Eight days later, one of his students was beaten up and put in the hospital because he attempted to come to the aid of a man being beaten at a highway rest area because his assailants thought him to be “Arab;” the man was actually Indian. These and other similar events drifted into the rehearsal room.

From the festival’s first performance—a staged reading of Wallace’s War Boys (a play never professionally produced in the U.S.) at the trendy Dad’s Garage Theatre, it was obvious that something special was happening—and that Murphy’s brainstorm had been visionary. This play, about young vigilantes on the Texas-Mexico border, benefited from Dad’s frat boy style, resulting in a testosterone-infused  seventy minutes that made the play’s themes more powerful and organic, mediating the didactic impression created by the text on the page.

In all the productions and readings I witnessed, the sense of purpose resulted in some of the most consistently strong direction, acting, and ensemble work seen in Atlanta theatres in many years.

Rachel May feels that the Festival itself was a help for its participants.  “We had already gotten people to work together  on a common goal. . . . Anything having to do with community at that time was good. 9/11 crystallized the experience of working together. We wanted to be in rehearsal rather than in front of our TVs watching CNN. It helped us get through the aftermath because its issues allowed us to deal with what we were going through as a group.” [Emphasis mine] Talking with actors  who were involved in other projects at the time, May found that this sense of positive community and sense of a safety zone was not universal in Atlanta.  “People who were doing gut-busting comedies were getting a great cathartic release out of being able to go out and make people laugh. The others seemed to be having a harder time processing things.” [xix]

Several actors felt a personal benefit from acting in the Festival. Joshua Waterstone, playing a lead role in The Heart of America, was particularly affected. “I’m Jewish, and I had heard the Israeli side. I had never thought of the other point of view, Playing a Palestinian-American was helpful in my gaining empathy in how someone in this position feels.” He and Suhayda Samir  “found we could relate as brother and sister, with no regard to our ethnicity. I even had dinner with her family, and found it interesting to see some of the cultural conflict between Suhayda, who is very Americanized, and her father, who is an immigrant . . . and very traditional.” [xx]

Kathleen Wattis also found the plays increasing her awareness of viewpoints often absent in U.S. mainstream media and discourse. “Our media did a good job of keeping them [the Iraqis] faceless and nameless. So it winds up being a constant revelation to Americans that someone can hate us.”  Along with Wattis and Waterstone, Tim Haberger and Vincent Murphy found the post-show “talkbacks” held by many theatres, and a public talk by Naomi Wallace at Theatre Emory (expecting an audience of fifty or so, Emory personnel found themselves coping with an audience in the hundreds), to be fascinating. These discussions often became a forum for debating the idea of patriotism following 9/11, with some audience members expressing the view that it was unpatriotic to present work such as Wallace’s at that moment (this even occurred at Trestle on Pope Lick Creek), and others, many of whom felt they had no other public voice, arguing that criticism of U.S. problems and mistakes is an essentially patriotic act in a democracy.  

Of the full productions, One Flea Spare was clearly the box office winner, selling out its entire run and being extended for a week, closing only because the venue was needed for another booking.[xxi] May and Wattis both feel some of the play’s success was due to its “accessibility:” One Flea Spare is much closer to the “well-made” model than most of Wallace’s other plays, in which theme and poetry often fill the foreground of the plays’ canvases.[xxii] One Flea Spare’s metaphoric strength, which accounted for the strong effect it had on the Synchronicity company, may also have given the play’s politics and paranoiac mood an aesthetic distance which the Gulf War plays lacked, especially in placing the issues within a perspective three hundred years in the past. Several audience members expressed the feeling that the historical setting provided a safety feature for them. For a younger, more literal-minded, generation, the setting sometimes distanced the viewer too far. Although his social and political horizons were broadened through acting in Heart of America, Joshua Waterstone saw One Flea Spare as a play “about some other time,” with no relationship to The Retreating World  or the play he had acted in.

In contrast, In the Heart of America and The Retreating World offered the audience no sense of being in “some other time.” Although the production showed a theatricality and wit which is easy to miss on the page, it was strong medicine so close to the attacks. Kathleen Wattis identified a “common challenge” the plays posed to the audience: ‘How can you ask me to feel sympathy for them when I’m so angry about being attacked?’ I think that was a common challenge: how do you manage to see the other side through the emotions of the moment?” [xxiii]

Nine months after the bombings, a range of residual impact was still felt by participants. Some, such as Wier Harman, seem to have lost much of the fervor  expressed in September. Most, however, felt a stronger continuing influence on their work.

While American actors are limited in the degree to which their personal beliefs can dictate their choice of work, both Kathleen Wattis and Joshua Waterstone find a stronger sense of purpose in acting, and are interested in finding more work of similar resonance. “I decided during rehearsals that you don’t work just to work, because time is precious,” Wattis says. “What if this is the last show I work on? I haven’t been able to limit myself only to meaningful work, but I try harder to find something in all the work I do that will make it important for someone.”

PushPush Theatre has already continued its involvement with Naomi Wallace’s work. One of the plays produced during the Festival, The Girl Who Fell Through a Hole in Her Jumper (a children’s play written by Wallace and her partner, Bruce MacLeod), was revived in February; the theatre also presented a small, dark night production of Wallace and MacLeod’s In the Sweat, with a cast drawn largely from students at Atlanta’s arts magnet high school, in the spring of 2002. “We wanted to work on the piece because it had a great sense of language regarding racism and other ‘isms,’” said Artistic Director Haberger. “We didn't expect it to be much more than an exercise for our artists,” but “because the festival made Naomi's voice more understandable to a larger audience, we had a tremendous audience response.”

At the Georgia Shakespeare Festival, Richard Garner feels that participation in the Wallace Festival, and the reading of The Inland Sea, has encouraged his Board of Directors to take additional chances, perhaps leading to the premiere of a new play. Garner feels that some influence of the Wallace Festival was felt at his theatre’s 2002 summer season in Vincent Murphy’s production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which was praised by critics and audience for offering new insight on the play.[xxiv]

An important impact on Atlanta’s theatre ecology provoked by the Festival is greatly increased interest and willingness for collaboration between theatres, along with a stronger sense of community and willingness to take risks among the theatrical leadership. Atlanta theatre is  “suddenly in a place where there is much less fear of politics among theatre people, and an evident willingness to seek involvement,” says Murphy. Weir Harman claims he “can’t pick up the phone or check email without being induced into some sort of collaboration” May sees this growing interest as part of a an evolutionary process well underway before 9/11, but most others believe the terrorist attacks gave the collaboration a sense of context and urgency.

While Vincent Murphy has “always believed that theatre is a social and political meeting place,” the Wallace Festival had an major impact on him as a rare occasion in theatre where everything seems to happen together at the same time, on all sorts of levels. . . Naomi’s writing emphasizes the need for context in understanding anything, whether it’s the Middle East or a play, and the Festival, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, concretely fixed the importance of that need. It changed the ecology of theatre in Atlanta.” He feels unable to “ direct right now . . . without Naomi’s gift of context,”[xxv] and credits his success with Death of a Salesman to his experiences in the Festival. [xxvi]

For Murphy, a positive example of the Festival’s lasting impact is The Political Party 2002, a live theatre “talk show” co-sponsored by the Atlanta free weekly Creative Loafing, Hands On Atlanta (an organization which coordinates community volunteerism) and Dad’s Garage Theatre, which produced a staged reading of Naomi Wallace’s The War Boys, the first public performance of the Festival.

Dad’s Garage is a young theatre (Artistic Director Sean Daniels recently turned 30) that has built a reputation for broad, sometimes sophomoric,  farces, some of which have achieved some national attention.[xxvii] Their presence in the Wallace Festival was considered a major surprise by many in the Atlanta theatre community. Dad’s Garage in return seemed surprise at the enthusiastic response The War Boys received.

To explain the creation of the Political Party 2002 (described in a press release as “a series of spirited, live talk shows [extending to the November elections] featuring prominent Atlantans, from entertainers to business leaders to politicians,” aimed at “new audiences interested and involved in politics, civics and social change”), Sean Daniels points to a 2002 poll showing that more than two-thirds of Atlantans were unable to identify either of Georgia’s two U. S. Senators, and his growing awareness of the ways in which politics interrelates with even a “fun” theatre’s survival and success.

The publisher of Creative Loafing, Ken Edelstein, cites the “presence” of Dad’s Garage within its local neighborhood and among younger people. Dad’s is definitely an “audience-friendly” venue with a “safer” and definitely hipper climate for the target audience than any of the larger theatres. Even in taking this step toward activism,  Daniels shrewdly manages to maintain his  hipster doofus street cred  in the only quote directly attributed  to him in the press release: the faux-militant proclamation that "We're tired of The Man holdin' us down." The Political Party may be only a baby step toward greater political awareness, but it is a very hopeful sign that Naomi Wallace’s “gift of context” for 9/11 may have a continuing positive effect on the future on the ecology of Atlanta’s theatre.