The Bleakest Dawn
by Nellie Rose W.
Who can ever forget that day, and the frantic, heartbroken days that followed it? Searching the lists of the missing, searching the lists of the dead, desperately trying to email, phone, then the news trickling in slowly, good news, sometimes (“I didn’t go to work that day, I can’t believe it,”) and bad news that changed our lives forever.
I was in a comedy at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival at the time, a multimillion dollar operation. Some of us actors were NYC exports; I had a double investment as I am also an ex-government-brat, with friends in the Pentagon. Regardless of personal investment, across the boards everyone was scared.
We waited for a decision from our boss. Does the show go on? I know the whole “show must go on,” cliché, but really, there are some times in life when the damned show has to stop.
This was not one of those times, but it should have been.
Now, I have performed a comedy before under horrible emotional stress: at just 19, I was in The Man Who Came to Dinner, and the actor playing the doctor (a beloved friend of mine) had a heart attack, and was taken off of life support … we had a show that evening with his replacement. The character of “June” that night was a zombie with tear-glittering eyes.
I was older and more seasoned of an actor by the time we performed Noises Off the night after 9/11 happened…I still think it was a horrible decision to keep the plays going that night. Yes, people had come from out of town. Yes, laughter heals, but: There are times in life that call for silence, before healing laughter can begin.
I don’t remember the show that night; I am sure there was the usual amount of laughter, as I would remember a silent theatre; and perhaps those people in the audience that night were able to forget for a small amount of time, or to have a bit of respite before the truth hit.
The theatre is still being slammed by repercussions from 9/11. People stopped traveling so much, stopped going to see plays and films, they retreated back into the family circle, and they wanted warm, family things; in entertainment we saw a change, in that people wanted more personal experiences, more Disney movies, more moments together, more personal memories.
Broadway was broke: the theatre is still recovering from that. My union is still not half as strong as it was- our healthcare has been cut, funding has been cut, and Broadway tours have been made almost completely non-union, so us union actors are out in the cold, hoping for a day to come when our union will protect us again. The equity “shoe fund” in NYC has never had such a brisk business. (every equity actor in NYC can get one pair of shoes each winter. How’s that for shades of the Great Depression?)
On the opposite coast, the trickle-down effect is still happening in L.A. There are not enough t.v. and film jobs to go around, as reality shows are cheaper to do, so they still take up too much airspace. People like Kiefer Sutherland are doing commercials in order to have work, so the jobs that should be going to the lesser-known actors are now going to top names. I was offered $50 to do an MTV reality show: luckily, I had other means of support and was able to turn it down…humiliate myself for all the world to see, for $50?
That’s what it’s come to.
Things like 9/11, acts of true evil, are like throwing a great rock into a pond: the ripples spread outward, and affect areas of people’s lives that normally you wouldn’t even think about; some very young actors don’t even know that the tough time they are having is most probably a direct result of someone’s decision to kill a lot of Americans, all at once.
I am proud of us. I am proud of our resilience, of our ability in a time of great need to throw out our pride and pitch in and help total strangers; I am proud of our determination to keep going, at all costs.
Let’s remember, let’s have a silent moment remembering those who were lost on a terrible, terrible day; let’s have a moment of remembering and mourning our lost innocence,
But let’s keep going, at all costs.
