Humana Festival 2018 by Amy Wegener & Jenni Page-White

Author:Amy Wegener & Jenni Page-White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Limelight Editions
Published: 2020-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

ABOUT MARGINAL LOSS

This article first ran in the Limelight Guide to the 42nd Humana Festival of New American Plays , published by Actors Theatre of Louisville, and is based on conversations with the playwright before rehearsals for the Humana Festival production began.

When shell-shocked colleagues John and Allegra report for work in a cavernous, unfamiliar New Jersey warehouse, they’re still reeling in the wake of calamity, and barely know where to begin. It’s only been 48 hours since the offices of their investment firm were destroyed in the attack on the World Trade Center, and nobody yet grasps what’s happening—except that luck has spared these few traders, while most of their coworkers remain missing. Along with Cathy, their self-appointed leader, they stumble their way through grief as they brace for the overwhelming task of recouping their losses. Aside from the records in this storage facility, they’ve got one computer, pen and paper, and untold missing transactions. But there’s also a temp: enter Margaret, a recent college graduate eager to help. Will the team be ready when the stock market reopens in mere days—and can things ever return to normal? Should they?

Capturing the precariousness of this moment with fascinating insight, Deborah Stein’s Marginal Loss unfolds in the days following the 2001 devastation of the Twin Towers, as a group of grieving coworkers try to piece their business back together. Stein traces this exploration back to her own assignment as an office temp the week after the tragedy. “I was sent to this warehouse, and there were three or four people there from a company that had been located near the top of the North Tower,” she recalls. “These were the employees who hadn’t been at work that day, for whatever reason. They wanted me to sort unlabeled data tapes that were the backup for old computers, but didn’t have machines that could read them. So I made coffee, and got lunch, but after a few days they let me go, because there was no work to do. I remember feeling like I had no idea what they were experiencing, and it was absolutely none of my business. And anything I could say would not be enough.”

But it didn’t occur to Stein to write about this experience until years later, when she told the story to her husband—who’d watched the second plane hit from his office across the street. They had often spoken about that day, but she’d never mentioned her temp job. Confronted with his surprise, she explained, “It didn’t feel like my story to tell.” The New York native had been out of town on 9/11, and had watched the crisis on television while calling friends and family. “I felt uncomfortable trying to claim it as something I’d experienced,” she admits. A conversation ensued about what gives someone the right to tell a story like this one, and the many narratives that had glossed over the confusion of the tragedy’s aftermath, trading on comfortable hindsight—so Stein’s husband encouraged her to write her own version.

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