Pathfinder Theatre to present Anne Nelson play as inaugural production

In 2001, the week after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Columbia University professor Anne Nelson was visiting her sister in Park Slope in Brooklyn when one of her sister’s friends called. The friend had met a fire captain who had lost eight men, and he was struggling to write their eulogies. Nelson, a former reporter and war correspondent, met with the fire captain that afternoon and began helping him to compose the eulogies.

A month later, Nelson and her husband attended a benefit dinner for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. Seated beside Nelson was Jim Simpson, artistic director and founder of the Flea Theater, located just blocks from Ground Zero. One of Simpson’s young actors in the repertory had recently asked him to find a play addressing the 9/11 tragedy. Simpson searched through the classical and traditional repertory — and came up empty.

When Simpson heard Nelson’s story about the fire captain, he asked her if she would consider writing a play. Nelson agreed to try. Writing after her children had gone to bed, Nelson watched in amazement as the play came together over the course of eight nights. “It was the most unconscious writing I had done. It just flowed out,” Nelson said. “Usually, I fret over my work. This was somewhat cathartic, a very complex experience.”

The Flea Theater produced the play in December 2001; since then, the play has been performed in 48 U.S. states and a handful of other countries. This year, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the Flea Theater will reprise the work at several venues in Lower Manhattan.

Pathfinder Theatre will join in this commemoration by presenting a staged reading of The Guys at the Greensboro School of Creativity on September 9 and 10 at 7 p.m. This will be the inaugural production for Pathfinder Theatre, a new theatre company committed to “telling stories that matter.” The vision of Pathfinder Theatre is to help people discover, develop, embrace, and celebrate their creativity and their unique selves as individuals and in community.