Among its more notable achievements, this years anniversary of September 11 saw the debut of This Is Not About 9/11, a one-act play by 25-year-old Sarah Van Auken, daughter of Kenneth Van Auken, who died in Tower 1 at the age of 47, and Jersey Girl Lorie Van Auken. The play opens on a spare set stamped 9-11, where Sarah is to be interviewed by the newly opened Memorial Museum. Sarah, played by Van Auken herself, enters trailing a suitcase which is too large for just an overnight visit to New York. A burly sound guy fits her up with a lavalier mic, taking advantage of the passing intimacy of the situation in a way I hope (probably in vain) never actually happened. The bulk of the play consists of the interview of a valiant Sarah who, as per her agreement with the museum, is ready to tell her story. But the unseen interviewer, smarmily played by James C. Jackson with an offstage booming voice reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz, is having none of it. Contrary to what Sarah has been led to believe, the museum is not so much interested in her story of making something of herself in memory of her father, as in milking it for what is known in journalistic circles as human interest; and less charitably known as its tear-jerking potential. Its a riveting show, ending with the opening of the overstuffed suitcase containing Sarahs actual memorabilia - photograph albums, quilts, programs from school productions - for the audience to study close hand. But to anyone familiar with the role played by Sarahs mother in campaigning for the 9/11 Commission, whose process and findings she and the other Jersey Girls would come to criticize, its greatest power lies in what is left unsaid. This is hinted at in Sarahs response to the interviewers question of what she has learned from and since the attacks. Do your research, she says. Had there been a second act, we might have seen that line unpacked, that Pandoras Box opened. But Van Auken went as far as she could and it is enough.
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 18:52:54 +0000
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