New Play Provides a Voice for Local 9/11 Experiences

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a moment in time that remains fresh in many people's memories despite the ensuing years.

But for many students walking Northern Michigan University's campus today, 9/11 is part of history discussed in class, not a memory to reflect on.

This disparity of 9/11 as a lived experience versus a historical event is one of several themes of a new play, "Find A TV," written by two NMU professors - Assistant Honors Director Anna Zimmer and Theatre & Dance BFA Director Jimmy Ludwig.

The play, which will be performed during Homecoming at 7:30 p.m. Sept.17-19 in Jamrich 1100, was born out of an oral history project Zimmer's students completed as part of her Honors course focused on post-9/11 art and literature.

Stories from 9/11 have been told and retold over the last 25 years, but Zimmer said when she first decided to teach the course, she wanted to know what reaction was like on campus, across the U.P. and in rural midwestern areas in general.

"There's next to no information out there about that," Zimmer said.

So she sought to tell those stories, opting to use the research component of her Honors 201 class to create an oral history project.

She started by completing training from UC-Berkley's Oral History Center on best practices for gathering oral histories. Teaching her honors students those same procedures, her class of 20 interviewed 21 people regarding their experiences and memories of 9/11. In addition, Zimmer conducted roughly a dozen interviews herself.

"I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with them, but I didn't want them to waste away in a dusty basement," Zimmer said of the recordings.

She expressed that sentiment to friend and colleague Ludwig, whose response was "Let's make it a play."

So began a six-month-long process, with the pair pulling together the stories that would work best for the stage, told by people who lived through something their interviewers weren't alive to experience.

The cast consists of two people who are present-day "observers" and four who relive the stories told as part of the oral history project. In addition, the play provides an opportunity to discuss how news is consumed today, with the ubiquity of cell phones and algorithm-informed feeds designed to keep people scrolling on their phones.

"It used to be, in a situation like that, you would cluster around a single source of information - find a TV," Ludwig said. "Now, it's all curated, and it's curated by a device that knows your preferences. We wanted to put those two things up against each other, and I think we do that pretty successfully in the play."

Zimmer said it was important that the play speak to both current students and alumni.

"We had to create it for an audience that could look back and also an audience that could maybe learn something new about 9/11 through the play," Zimmer said. "For that reason, it was really important to us to also connect it to the present."

With the play now written, the next challenge for Zimmer and Ludwig was finding a performance venue. A packed departmental production calendar meant it wasn't likely the play could be performed as part of Fores Roberts Theatre's regular line-up, so Ludwig brought it to the student group Found Space Theatre, which he advises, as an opportunity for them to produce.

With a production crew and a cast lined up, the play was ready to hit the stage, and it premiered in March with a staged reading on campus, directed by then-NMU student Phillip Smith. Smith will reprise his role as director for the September performances, but this time as an NMU alumnus, having graduated in May.

Ludwig said this will provide Smith with his first professional directorship, which will "open a whole kaleidoscope of opportunities" for him.

It's an example of another welcome outcome their idea has brought forward, Ludwig said, adding that not only was there collaboration between NMU's Honors Program and its Theatre and Dance department, but the play will now allow NMU alumni returning for Homecoming an opportunity to interact with current students by attending the performance.

In addition, NMU's Archives worked with Zimmer to catalogue the oral histories, which are available for viewing on UPLINK, its digital archives collection.

"Once we lined all of those dominoes up, they began to fall in this sort of beautiful way," Ludwig said of all the different collaborations the play's creation has sparked.

In a way, the coming together of several campus communities echoes the shared national experience of that day, and the following days and weeks, when differences disappeared in a collective grief for the lives lost and national need to offer support to those directly affected.

Zimmer said once people hear of the project she started, they often offer up new people to speak with. She is already making a list of people for her next Honors 201 class to interview.

With "Find A TV" completed and already being performed on campus, Zimmer and Ludwig's next step is to publish the piece, which they hope to do soon.

The play runs for 45 minutes, and is followed by an audience-led discussion on 9/11 - its impacts personally, regionally and globally, and the far-reaching ramifications of the largest single-day loss of life as a result of a foreign attack on American soil since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

"I don't just want people to come watch a play," Ludwig said. "I want people to have a conversation, an actual conversation."

"Find A TV" runs Thursday, Sept. 17 through Saturday, Sept. 19, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Jamrich 1100. The performances are free, but donations are accepted. All proceeds will be split between the NMU Honors Program and NMU Theatre and Dance department.

Click here to register for the event.

In addition to "Find A TV," Forest Roberts Theatre will also host several performances of the Broadway musical "Come From Away," which tells the story of small-town Gander, Newfoundland, whose residents welcomed 7,000 airplane passengers whose flights were diverted on 9/11 following the closure of U.S. airspace to commercial traffic, effectively doubling the size of the town in a single day.

"Come From Away" will run September 24-26 and again October 1-3, with shows at 7:30 p.m. each day.

Click here to purchase tickets.