‘With Their Eyes’ play from Breakthrough Theatre marks 9-11
Located just four blocks from the World Trade Center in New York City, Stuyvesant High School had a uniquely terrifying vantage point for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Faculty, students and staff responded with a series of monologues that became a book and a play, “With Their Eyes.”
In its first major production since shutting its physical location, Breakthrough Theatre Company will present online performances of “With Their Eyes” Sept. 11-13. Each night’s show will be performed live, and Friday’s performance will be followed by a talkback with the cast and crew.
More than 20 people interviewed after the attacks, which killed upward of 2,600 people in the vicinity of the World Trade Center, are represented in the play. Stuyvesant High English teacher and theater adviser Annie Thoms, who shepherded the play’s development, told HBO that the multiple voices were key.
“The basic idea of this play is that a single story is not enough to show the experience of a community,” Thoms said in an interview about HBO’s documentary on the play. “You can get to the truth of the experience and the complexity by hearing these different voices.”
“With Their Eyes” is modeled on the plays of Anna Deavere Smith, who wrote the foreword for the book version. Smith is known for her oral-history style plays, based on interviews with witnesses to events such as the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn and the 1992 Los Angeles riots after the acquittal of police officers who were recorded beating suspect Rodney King.
The Breakthrough performers in
“With Their Eyes” will share the stories of people of varying ages and races — just as the Stuyvesant High students did in the initial performances.
“We felt strongly that it was important for students to interview and perform across gender, race and age lines,” Thomas said in the HBO interview. “In some
ways these stories are both individual and deeply human and communal.”
The Breakthrough Theatre production will open on the 19th anniversary of the attacks, which also killed hundreds more, including passengers on planes that crashed in a Pennsylvania field and at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.
Presented at 8 p.m. Sept. 11-12, and 7 p.m. Sept. 13, “With Their Eyes” is directed by Wade Hair. Among the cast are Lillian Almodovar, BeeJay Aubertin Clinton, Mark Davids, Christine Hicks, Iris Sherman, Rhyse Silvestro and Larry Stallings.
Tickets are $10 per household. Be aware that the play contains frank description of the attacks and video news footage from the day. For more information, go to breakthroughtheatre.com and click on the performance date you prefer. To register and pay, click on the Zoom link provided.