"Taking the stage, putting on plays is our contribution to the world. This is what we do, what we can do, what we must do."

Almost immediately after September 11, however, the artistic ramifications of the attack and the subsequent American response began to be felt. Performances of Zulu Time, a theater piece by the internationally acclaimed Canadian director Robert Lepage, scheduled as part of a Quebec Arts Festival in New York, were cancelled because it dealt with airplane disasters. The Roundabout Theater, about to begin rehearsals of Assassins, the Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical that treats American presidential assassinations—actual and attempted—from John Wilkes Booth to John Hinckley, postponed performances indefinitely because of its subject matter. Princeton University's McCarter Theater announced its cancellation of Richard Nelson's The Vienna Notes, a play about politics and terrorism, by stating, "The context in which we would receive the play has changed drastically, and it would be insensitive of us to present the play at this moment in our history."

While it is impossible to know how the changed political climate has affected theater companies' play selection for the upcoming season, the immediate controversy regarding critical statements made by figures like Susan Sontag, Katha Pollit, and Bill Maher suggested possible dangers to artistic free expression. According to an article by Leslie Bennetts in the December 2001 issue of Vanity Fair:

After the World Trade Center attacks, New Dramatists, a venerable organization of playwrights, held a private meeting, closed to the press, for those who wanted to vent their concerns, which turned out to be an overflow crowd. "The vast majority of writers felt very anxious about the patriotic swell that's taking over the country," playwright Gina Barnett told me later. Would there be room for artists to be critical of society, of government, of anything—or would everyone have to speak in one voice or bebrandished a troublemaker? There was a lot of fear about the repercussions on free speech.

An immediate example of governmental response to the crisis occurred when the National Endowment for the Arts delayed a grant to the Berkeley Repertory Theater for its production of Homebody/Kabul, Tony Kushner's play about Afghanistan and the Taliban. Written well before the events of September 11, the play was viewed in a new light after the terrorist attacks. The N.E.A. eventually released the funds, after the play had received its premiere production at the New York Theater Workshop without incident, but the N.E.A. "review" contained at least a hint of the fears expressed at the New Dramatists meeting.

In addition to the upsurge in patriotism and the quest for increased domestic security after September 11, the need for a greater understanding of other societies, cultures, and religions was expressed in many circles. For the performing arts, including theater, this meant expanding the presentation of international work seen on our stages. The decision of Nigel Redden, artistic director of the Lincoln Center Festival, to invite a company from Iran to perform Ta'ziyeh, a traditional cycle of religious music-theater, at the 2002 festival was based in part on the negative response to Islam generated by the terrorist attacks. In addition, according to Redden as quoted in The Village Voice, "I felt troubled by the fact that, as a reasonably literate man, I had not heard of the Battle of Kermala. Since we communicate through metaphors, it's vital for us to share some communality of reference. Cultural and historic icons are prerequisites to understanding each other."

For Joseph V. Melillo, executive director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the collaborative aspect of theater makes it a potent form of expressing multicultural diversity, having "the capacity to uniquely embody the potential of individuals to creatively transcend differences." Even though Cynthia Hedstrom, programming director of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, was criticized for presenting a Palestinian theater piece from Ramallah, she strongly believes that, "If you don't know the stories of the world, you're handicapped. Confronting these narratives builds better citizenship. This has to be our collective mission."

Yet if the events of September 11 have increased the need for exposure to theatrical visions from throughout the world, they have also greatly complicated the process of presenting those companies. For example, 10 members of the Iranian troupe invited by Nigel Redden to preform Ta'ziyeh were denied visas, necessitating a change of programming and elimination of a quarter of the performances. Although the I.N.S. cited fears that the Iranian performers might seek refuge in the United States as the reason for the denied visas, according to The Village Voice, Redden sees the visa problems as "an unavoidable part of the post-9-11 landscape."

Even though the gestation period for new plays can take many months, if not years, two off-Broadway productions quickly responded to the events of September 11. Jim Simpson, artistic director of the Flea Theater, located near Ground Zero, commissioned the journalist Anne Nelson to write a play directly about the painful aftermath of the tragedy. Her play, The Guys, dramatizes the encounter between a fire captain who has lost most of his men at the World Trade Center and an editor who helps him write the eulogies he must deliver at their funerals. Initially performed by Sigourney Weaver and Bill Murray, and later by such actors as Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, and Carol Kane and Stephen Lang, the play was called by one critic "a simple, moving work, taking theater back to its cathartic origins." (The theater offers special discount tickets to members of the police, fire, and Port Authority forces.)

In a very different vein, the comic performance artist Reno drastically changed the project she was working on to incorporate her experiences on September 11. In her solo show Reno: Rebel Without a Pause—Unrestricted Reflections on September 11, she tells how, as a resident of TriBeCa living eight blocks from the towers, she first learned about the attacks and how they affected her life. She then broadens her largely humorous monologue into a commentary on domestic and international politics.

The profound effect that September 11 has had on theater artists is now becoming more evident. The International WOW Company's production of The Bomb, conceived and directed by Josh Fox, opened in March of this year. After a first act that presents the history of nuclear weapons from Robert Oppenheimer to Hiroshima and beyond, the second act takes place in "New York and Afghanistan, September 11, 2001, to the Present"and links all these events together. This summer the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab presented a five-week festival at the Here Theater titled "In the Summer of 2002."  According to Anne Cattaneo, a Juilliard faculty member and Lincoln Center Theater dramaturg who runs the lab, the festival showcased young playwrights and their vision of America today in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

Since we communicate through metaphors, it's vital for us to share some community of reference. Cultural and historic icons are prerequisites to understanding each other.

To close on a personal note, this spring the students in my liberal arts elective course "Theater, Performance, Communication" experienced one of the ways that theater can respond to an event like the September 11 attacks. We began by studying the work of actor/playwright Anna Deavere Smith, who has created theater pieces on the 1991 Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn (Fires in the Mirror) and the 1992 riots after the verdict of the first Rodney King trial (Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992) by interviewing a wide variety of participants and observers, editing their words into a series of monologues, and then performing those monologues in an evening-length theater piece that illuminates the event from a variety of perspectives. Each student—the class was comprised of actors, dancers, instrumentalists, and a composer—then interviewed someone outside the Juilliard community, inquiring into that person's experience of and response to 9/11.The students edited their interviews into monologues and performed them for the class.

Taken together, the monologues gave a real sense of the many ways people responded to the events of that momentous day. Some students interviewed people (a policeman, a doctor, a businessman) who were at or near the World Trade Center at the time of the attacks and thus were directly involved. Other monologues told how the individual first learned of the attacks and the effect it had on them, both at the time and afterward. Some reacted very emotionally to what happened, while others focused on the economic effects they experienced. The assignment demonstrated how art—in this case theater—can transcend journalism in both documenting and interpreting an event in a way that can communicate both factual material and the emotional truth of an event in new and different forms.