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Simon Harvey-Williams, the other half of Bristol-based writing duo Darkstuff Productions, talks about how a fascination with how individuals responded to the events of 9/11 has informed the company’s new adaptation of Albert Camus’ The Outsider…

At one point in Outside, our central character David sits watching the coverage of the planes flying into the Twin Towers on 9/11; he comments that the looped footage of the planes crashing into the buildings is almost hypnotic. I remember 10 years ago doing/thinking exactly the same thing: it wasn’t out of morbid voyeurism, but rather in the hope that by seeing it happen over and over again the events might sink in or at least be more understandable in some way.

How we as individuals react to and make sense of events, and also how society seems to expect a certain emotional response, are some of the questions raised in the play and they have been fascinating to explore. David appears to have a somewhat detached perspective on the events of 9/11 – even though he has been personally affected - and in our script and in the original source material the other characters appear to be almost more disturbed by the central protagonists’ apparent lack of motive for or explanation of his crime than the actual act itself.

When we set about writing the script we didn’t want to deal directly with what happened on September 11th but we did want to draw parallels between the main character’s senseless crime and the attacks in New York. Ten years on and people are still asking themselves, ‘why?’, because despite the ‘war on terror’ and the killing of Bin Laden there is no clear cut resolution or easy solutions. I think after a catastrophic event like 9/11 people inherently try to look for answers or hope for some form of retribution and that without either of these a sense of helplessness and confusion remains.   

Having said all that, Outside is not a ‘heavy’ or ‘worthy’ play, though the above ideas are there if people chose to pick up on them. Our primary concern all along has been to produce an entertaining piece of theatre and within the play there is a surprising amount of humour and hopefully recognizable situations.

Outside opens at the Brewery Theatre on Tuesday 6 September. Click here for further info and details of a special Forum Theatre event to mark the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.