Hope in Chaos
A play based on surviving 9/11
Write what you know. It's the one guideline writers live by. What Heather McCuen knows is Hope in Chaos. Heather McCuen is a playwright, and Hope in Chaos is her first full-length play. The world premier was held in Montreal just last week.
September 11, 2001. McCuen had been living in Brooklyn, studying at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, and working at the China Grill New York. That day she was at home, her roommate pointing silently to the TV. It must be some disaster movie, she thought. Later, running between the TV set and the rooftop, where they'd watch the disaster unfold. “The sky completely turned black,” she says, as the towers collapsed.
The cleverly titled Hope in Chaos is based on McCuen's experiences over the next few days amid the rubble, or on top of the pile, to use her words, where lessons were learned and hope restored.
“Hope” is a young woman who, like McCuen, was living and working in New York when the towers fell. “Hope is very much me,” McCuen tells me. “I'm a little more stable than she is.”
In the wake of 9/11 McCuen approached her boss at the restaurant. They'd heard on the radio that rescue workers were not leaving the site, so they decided to go the rescuers, bringing them sandwiches and water. They traveled up the highway toward Ground Zero, police waving them through, knowing they were carrying much-needed sustenance. McCuen and her team were eventually approached by an aide to the state's senator, given special task force designation, and worked as a liaison team for all of the different rescue groups on site.
The roughly 90-minute play is split into 2 acts, the first act taking place at “Margueritaville,” a bar the team in the play retires to at night. Much of the dialogue is an interview between Hope and a New York Times reporter.
Fast forward to 2010 for Act II, in which that same reporter tracks down Hope to see how she is 9 years later. “The play,” McCuen tells me, quoting cast-member Frayne McCarthy, “is my exorcism, and my valentine to my experience.”
Hope in Chaos is not a political play, although the politics are hard to avoid, says McCuen. “It's definitely not a conspiracy play,” she adds, so don't go hoping to hear anything about who really downed the towers. As for what it was like to be there at that time, McCuen says “it's kind of hard to describe 17 storeys of smoky rubble.” But that's what the play is for. McCuen talks, ironically, about how much good there was at Ground Zero, how much divinity, “which is what we've sort of been struggling to get back ever since.”
Hope in Chaos runs at MainLine Theatre until Saturday. Watch the promo.
Hope in Chaos
Hope in Chaos
Hope in Chaos
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