Hey Travis - thanks for the thoughtful piece. To answer your question, the play was actually started in 2001, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. I finished the first draft in 2002, and stopped working on it in 2003. So you're right that it has a raw, somewhat clunky, take on 9/11, and also that it was a warning of events that have come true, more or less. I should note that, for good or ill, the images of 9/11 are not written into the play, though the play does explicitly refer to that day's events.
I was also a less skilled writer then than I am now - by way of comparison, 1001 (written in 2004-05, premiered in 2007) deals with the emotional reality of 9/11 but doesn't refer to the literal event. There are a couple of things in 1001 that might date it - a scene in the now Hamas-run Gaza, for instance, or a reference to Bush as president - but as it is a work of the early 21st century, I might choose to leave it. I just saw Edward Albee's Peter and Jerry, for example, and the attempts to update it just seemed kind of clunky and awkward. Amusingly, though, the line "Time's not for blockheads" became a laugh line, one imagines because of the sad state of American journalism...
All Comments
I was also a less skilled writer then than I am now - by way of comparison, 1001 (written in 2004-05, premiered in 2007) deals with the emotional reality of 9/11 but doesn't refer to the literal event. There are a couple of things in 1001 that might date it - a scene in the now Hamas-run Gaza, for instance, or a reference to Bush as president - but as it is a work of the early 21st century, I might choose to leave it. I just saw Edward Albee's Peter and Jerry, for example, and the attempts to update it just seemed kind of clunky and awkward. Amusingly, though, the line "Time's not for blockheads" became a laugh line, one imagines because of the sad state of American journalism...