Remembering Sept. 11 with 'The Guys'

COEUR d'ALENE - "The Guys,' says Elisha Gunn, is about much more than entertainment.

It's about healing, too. And it's about remembering.

"This is really important to me as an actress, to be able to perform things that have historical significance," said Gunn, who will play Joan in the one-hour act.

"People forget unless they're reminded in an emotional, connecting sort of way," she said. "What art can do, besides entertainment, also helps people remember. What we learned from history is that we don't learn from history unless we are reminded of the consequences of it."

The Coeur d'Alene Public Library, 702 E. Front Ave., will commemorate 9/11 with two presentations of a special theatrical performance on Sunday.

Two free performances of "The Guys," a play by Anne Nelson, will be presented by the Bombay Cat Theatre Project in the Community Room at 2 and 7 p.m.

"The Guys" is a memorial to the shattered psyche of post-Sept. 11 New York on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. Told through the eyes of a fire captain and the journalist he enlists to help him write the eulogies for his fallen men, the play is described as "riveting, inspirational and cathartic."

The two-person play does not have an intermission.

"It's really neat to feel something like this with an audience because you can feel kind of what the audience is feeling and you feed off of their emotions," Gunn said.

Nelson, a reporter and journalism professor at Columbia University, met with a fire captain at a loss for words to describe the heroics of his men who gave their lives in trying to save a city, and country, under fire. She wove her experience into the play, which premiered at the Flea Theatre, in Tribeca, mere blocks from Ground Zero. The debut featured Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver.

The Bombay Cat Theatre Project is an art collective, founded in Chicago in 2002 by Todd Jasmin and his wife, Cory, and now based in Coeur d'Alene. Its mission is to "find a story worthy to tell, and to tell it well," Jasmin said.

Jasmin recently returned to Coeur d'Alene after a year of teaching at Centralia College. Regionally, he has worked with Interplayers, Spokane Civic Theatre, Idaho Repertory Theatre, Lake City Playhouse, Coeur d'Alene Summer Theatre and North Idaho College.

This is the second time Bombay Cat has produced "The Guys." The first was in Helena, Mont., in 2007. It is Jasmin's third time in the role.

"I get caught up in the emotional impact of it," he said.

This is Gunn's second portrayal of Joan in "The Guys" having performed it in 2005. Some of her past performing experience includes Uptown Opera Co., Disneyland, Paramount Pictures, Coeur d'Alene Summer Theatre and Dance Theatre Northwest.

Gunn said since 9/11, she has come to appreciate more the peace and freedom people have in America.

"A lot of the world lives in fear all the time. They grow up in it, they die in it. It's part of their culture, part of their life," she said. "What a great privilege to live here, to not live under that fear everyday of our lives, to understand true freedom."

Both remember where they were on 9/11. Todd was working at dog day care in Chicago. Gunn was at home when her husband Ben woke up with the news. For both, there was confusion, anger, hurt and plenty of questions. Why?

Jasmin said many people are still healing from 9/11, and The Guys can help with that process. He recalled a quote from Nelson, "a place doesn't necessarily heal people, but it does bring them together in a dedicated space to experience emotion."

Gunn hopes they pack the house for The Guys.

"It's important we don't forget, because we will forget. That's what history tells us," she said.