We Can't Go Back

From the Executive Director

By Ben Cameron

While the October Season Preview issue of American Theatre is always a cause for jubilation, it’s hard to feel jubilant here in New York City these days.
Two mornings ago, my reading on the commuter train was interrupted by the conductor saying, “If you look out of the right window, you can see the World Trade Center burning.” There was a huge gasp and instant conjecture—an air conditioning unit gone wrong? A fire at the restaurant? It couldn’t be another terrorist attack, could it?

Little did we know then, of course. 

In the hours and days since, life here has been a combination of wailing sirens and eerie silence. Of distant rumbles and billowing smoke. Of continuing disbelief every time I look at the skyline. Of e-mails flying fast and furious, desperate for information about friends and loved ones. Of going over every news photo, face by face, looking for people I know, as if seeing them there will reassure me that they are indeed alive.

As I write this, there is still so much unknown. Who and how many are missing cannot be stated with certainty; what the final casualty counts will be defies comprehension. 

What does seem certain is that few of us will go untouched. If not family and friends, certainly friends of friends are likely to be among those lost. And with the heavy contingent of young actors, directors and other artists who did temp work at the World Trade Center  daily—friends by virtue of their work, by their aspirations, but friends with names we had yet to know and that many of us had yet to meet—it seems certain that our profession’s circle of friends will be inevitably diminished.

Their shadows hang over us today and will hang over us throughout the coming season and beyond. 

As Edward Bond’s The War Plays draws to a close, the Fourth Woman says: “We don’t learn from other people’s mistakes—not even from most of our own. But knowledge is collected and tools handed on. We can’t go back to the beginning, but we can change the future.”

© - 2006 by Theatre Communications Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.