This is a timeline leading up to Enron's fall taken from the New York Times on which I have highlighted the key dates that I believe are important to know for the play:
1985 - Houston Natural Gas merges with InterNorth to form Enron, HNG CEO Kenneth Lay becomes CEO of combined company the following year.
1989 - Enron begins trading natural gas commodities.
1990 - Lay hires Jeffrey Skilling to lead the company's effort to focus on commodities trading in the deregulated markets. Andrew S. Fastow is one of Skilling's first hires later that year.
1991 - Richard Causey leaves Arthur Andersen LLP to join Enron as assistant controller.
1997 - Skilling named president and chief operating officer of Enron. Fastow creates Chewco, a partnership, to buy the University of California pension fund's stake in another joint venture dubbed JEDI, but Chewco doesn't meet requirements to be kept off Enron's balance sheet. First step toward similar financial moves to hide debt and inflate profits that fuel Enron's downfall.
1998 - Fastow named finance chief.
1999- Causey named chief accounting officer. Fastow creates the first of two partnerships, LJM, purported to "buy" poorly performing Enron assets and hedge risky investments but really helps the company hide debt and inflate profits. Enron directors approve Fastow's plan that he run the partnerships that do deals with Enron while continuing as Enron's finance chief. Causey and former chief risk officer Rick Buy assigned to monitor such deals to protect Enron's interests.
August 2000 - Enron shares reach high of $90.
December 2000 - Enron announces that Skilling, then president and chief operating officer, will succeed Kenneth Lay as CEO in February 2001. Lay will remain as chairman. Stock hits 52-week high of $84.87.
2001:
Aug. 14 - Skilling resigns; Lay named CEO again.
Aug. 22 - Finance executive Sherron Watkins meets privately with Lay to discuss concerns of murky finance and accounting that could ruin the company.
Oct. 16 - Enron announces $638 million in third-quarter losses and a $1.2 billion reduction in shareholder equity stemming from writeoffs related to failed broadband and water trading ventures as well as unwinding of so-called Raptors, or fragile entities backed by falling Enron stock created to hedge inflated asset values and keep hundreds of millions of dollars in debt off the energy company's books.
Oct. 19 - Securities and Exchange Commission launches inquiry into Enron finances.
Oct. 22 - Enron acknowledges SEC inquiry into a possible conflict of interest related to the company's dealings with Fastow's partnerships. Lay says, "We will cooperate fully with the SEC and look forward to the opportunity to put any concern about these transactions to rest."
Oct. 23 - Lay professes confidence in Fastow to analysts.
Oct. 24 - Fastow ousted.
Nov. 5 - Enron treasurer Ben Glisan Jr. and in-house attorney Kristina Mordaunt fired for investing in Fastow-run partnership.
Each invested $5,800 in 2001 and received a $1 million return a few weeks later.
Nov. 8 - Enron files documents with SEC revising its financial statements for previous five years to account for $586 million in losses.
Nov. 9 - Dynegy Inc. announces an agreement to buy Enron for more than $8 billion in stock.
Nov. 19 - Enron restates its third-quarter earnings and discloses a $690 million debt is due Nov. 27.
Nov. 28 - Enron stock plunges below $1 as Dynegy Inc. aborts its plan to buy its former rival.
Dec. 2 - Enron goes bankrupt, thousands of workers laid off.
2002:
Jan. 9 - Justice Department confirms it has begun a criminal investigation of Enron.
Jan. 10 - The White House discloses Lay sought help from two Cabinet members shortly before the company collapsed, but neither offered aid. The company's auditor, Arthur Andersen LLP, says it has destroyed tons of Enron documents.
Jan. 23 - Lay resigns as chairman and CEO.
Jan. 25 - Cliff Baxter, former head of Enron's trading unit and later vice president before his resignation in May 2001, found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Feb. 4 - Lay resigns from the board.
Feb. 7 - Skilling, Fastow, Michael Kopper appear at Congress with McMahon and in-house Enron lawyer Jordan Mintz. Skilling testifies; Fastow and Kopper invoke Fifth Amendment rights.
Feb. 12 - Lay invokes Fifth Amendment at a Senate hearing after expressing "profound sadness" at Enron's collapse.
March 14 - Former Enron auditor Arthur Andersen LLP indicted for destroying Enron-related documents to thwart investigators.
April 9 - David Duncan, Andersen's former top Enron auditor, pleads guilty to obstruction for instructing his staff to destroy documents as per company policy.
June 15 - Andersen convicted.
Not only is important to understand this timeline so I can apply my knowledge to my work but my choices as an actor will be informed by it. When I first read the play I was reading about these events that I had no clue about, let alone the significance in the companies journey. When you see the lawyers and accountants crop up in the play it just seems like a tool for making the world more formal and yet if you dig deeper these names were plastered all over the scandal. Plus it is enjoyable to find this all out because when you do a scene that is quite literally verbatim of an advert or an interview said by the characters onstage it makes you feel like you are a part of this crazy world. When building said world and forming relationships it is so important to allow ourselves to be informed by the real life events because it may not be 100% true 'but we're going to put it together and sell it to you as the truth' anyway.
Claudia's Dabhol Power Plant
Claudia's adventures in India are something that gets mentioned in the play a lot with it being the thing that brings her and Lay together, divides herself and Skilling and is ultimately the reason for her downfall. To understand the grand scale of the project I wanted to do some research into what, where and how this power plant came about.
The plan to build the plant was announced in 1992 with Enron saying they would invest $3 billion into building it. The plant was meant to be pinpointing Enron's international status and with the purpose of helping the Indian economy by providing them with the largest foreign investment in the countries history. However it turned out to go completely the other way for both Enron and India with the plant causing great economic turmoil and raising many questions about the human rights of the whole plan. From the start of the process the plant came under scrutiny as it was making direct deals with corrupt Indian politicians and officials in the hopes of getting the plant up and running faster. Human rights groups accused Enron of stealing land, damaging water supplies and employing criminal tactics to get there way. For example an attack by state police on a village who opposed the plant saw a pregnant women being beaten naked for being the wife of one of the oppositions leaders. However the US government found that the state forces and the Dabhol Power cooperation has violated no human rights and provided a further $300 million to Enron for its ventures in Dabhol ignoring the refusal the World Bank had given them. However in June 2001 the plants only customer, the Maharashtra state government, broke it's agreement as the power was too expensive. The power plant was a huge mess, with corruption and cut corners a plenty with the power plant itself having caused a huge economic and social impact in Dabhol that it is still recovering from to date.
Researching this made me really uncomfortable. I have talked so much about this women who I enjoy playing, getting into her head, listening to her thoughts and thinking with her brain and then you look at the consequences of all that ambition and the reality hits you that this women's big dream was to build this plant which caused such environmental and social problems. I suppose it goes to show the extent people at this company were willing to go to; for power, for position, for money and it was all to be at whatever cost to the outside world. Using this to inform my character I hope to use my new found understanding of deals such as this to show a darker, ruthless side to my character that was willing to step on innocent people just to keep climbing the cooperate ladder.
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