9/11

In Enron the downfall of the company is marked alongside the events of September 11th 2001. To understand the significance of this reference and to be able to do justice to a scene that I believe is particularly emotive, we need to research what happened that day and understand the scale of the topic we are dealing with. 

The World Trade Centre was home to 430 companies with an average of 50,000 employees working each day and 140,000 visitors. The morning of 9/11 at 8:45am, the first of 4 plane crashes that day occurred as a plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Centre. 18 minutes later a second plane hit the south tower. Including those on board the planes 2.823 people were killed at the Twin Towers attack. At 9:45am another plane was flown into the west side of the Pentagon. Including those on board the plane 189 people were killed. Due to the 2300 degrees fahrenheit temperatures from the fires caused by the attack on the Twin Towers the south tower collapsed. Soon after the second tower also collapsed leaving only 6 survivors. After that 0 survivors were recovered from the site of the destroyed World Trade Centre named Ground Zero. Another plane crash occurred at 10:10am when a plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. The passengers on board the plane fought the four hijackers, flipped the plane over, crashing it into the field. It was rumoured that the plane may have been heading to the White House or another densely populated location. All 45 people on board died but their efforts may have saved the lives of hundreds of others. 

The New York Stock Exchange shut down until September 17th, the longest period of time since 1933 amidst the crisis of the great depression. The markets knew that there would be panic selling so wanted to force people to wait until everything had calmed down and the immediate shock waves had passed. On the first day of trading the market fell 684 points the biggest loss for a singular trading day in exchange history. Over that initial week of trading after the attacks an estimated $1.4 trillion of value was lost. Airline stock shares plummeted with American Airlines dropping from $29.70 per share pre 9/11 to a $18.00 price after with United Airlines facing an even more serious drop from $30.82 to $17.50.

What does this mean in terms of Enron? The markets were in chaos and if there was something Enron needed at that moment in time it was stability- they didn't need people getting scared- and 9/11 did just that. 9/11 isn't necessarily directly linked with the reasons Enron collapsed but it was a catalyst in the beginning of the end for the company.  We have seen the footage and the pictures, read the facts, listened to the accounts and now it is our responsibility to make the piece we include in the play sensitive, truthful and meaningful. We have here two events that shook the world for two very different reasons but based upon similar circumstances; that something that was once a beacon of hope and stability was destroyed before our very eyes. People were lost and frightened as their core values were shifted. That imagery of loss and large scale destruction is something we aim to bring. Two pillars of the American economy gone within 3 months of each other. As a company we need to translate to our audience how catastrophic this really was.