Herstory Theater Brings "The Guys" to American Mural Project for the 25th Anniversary of September 11

Friday, September 11, doors and bar 5pm, performance 5:30pm | Winsted, CT

American Mural Project hosts a performance of "The Guys," Anne Nelson's one-act play about September 11, presented by Herstory Theater. The reading is part of AMP's History After Hours series and its broader America250 programming.

The play's origin is its own piece of history. Nelson, a Columbia journalism professor who had never written a play before, was seated next to Flea Theatre founder Jim Simpson at a benefit dinner in the weeks after the attacks. Simpson was searching for a way to address September 11 directly at his theater, seven blocks from Ground Zero; Nelson wrote "The Guys" in a little over a week, working through midnight hours.

Simpson's wife, actress Sigourney Weaver, read it and wanted in immediately, recruiting her friend Bill Murray to play opposite her. The workshop production opened December 4, 2001—less than three months after the towers fell—and quickly became a sold-out phenomenon, later expanding into a 2002 film with Weaver and Anthony LaPaglia. In the decades since, the play has been staged in more than 60 theaters across the U.S. and 14 other countries.

The story itself centers on Nick, a New York fire captain unable to find the words to eulogize eight of his men killed in the attacks, and Joan, a news editor and former journalist who helps him write what he can't say himself. The two come from entirely different worlds and would never have crossed paths without the tragedy that brings them together—a quiet, dialogue-driven piece built almost entirely around two people sitting and talking, with one notable exception: a minute-long tango danced to music Nelson composed herself.

Herstory Theater, founded by Virginia Wolf in Farmington, Connecticut, has built its reputation largely on telling the stories of overlooked women in history, though it also takes on other projects it considers worth telling.

American Mural Project, 90 Whiting Street, Winsted, CT. Tickets at amp-america-250-history-the-guys.eventbrite.com.