The Future: September 2001 (revisited)

Revised scene from I Hate This (a play without the baby): The Silver Collection

DAVID is seated on the stool at the end of the previous scene. He hears the familiar music, and turns to look at the screen, which reads:

SLIDE: September 2001

SLIDE: The Future

DAVID does not want to perform the scene he wrote so many years ago. He looks at the audience seated before him in his living room and picks out a familiar face. He calls them by name, and asks this simple question.

DAVID

Where were you?

He asks two or three audience members the same question. Responses varied, but they were the same answer. At the gym. In the car. At work. In Tennessee. At school.

DAVID

Traumatic events can reactivate entirely unrelated trauma. I was in rehearsal for the first week of my new job, as an actor-teacher for the school residency program at Great Lakes Theater. Where I still work.

The team gathered in the bar and grill on the ground floor and we watched the television as those two mammoth structures collapsed into dust.

The towers fell. And I thought, “Yeah. It feels like that.”

End of Scene

"I Hate This (a play without the baby): The Silver Collection" was performed at the home of the playwright, October 14 - 18, 2026

See also: The Future: September 2001

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