When the curtain rises, the stage set for Melissa Robertson’s new one-woman show, 9/11: I Remember!!!, is ominously dark, with the exception of two solid rectangular shapes backlit in red. A spotlit Robertson appears suddenly, standing between the towers, which are proportioned so that they are actually slightly smaller than her diminutive 5′2″ frame. In apparent homage to Karen Finley, she begins the show in a conservative navy-blue pinstriped suit and immediately dumps a bucket of powdered sugar over her head as “Everybody Hurts” by REM plays in the background.

Then, the show truly begins.

Face caked in dusty white powder, Robertson delivers a 3 1/2 hour monologue in which she passionately depicts the lives of 210 of the victims of 9/11. Each 60-second rendition is a little jewel that fleshes out a life in a powerful and moving way, demonstrating once again what theater can do for humanity.

“Of course I wanted to depict every victim, but I had to submit to the constraints of the stage,” Robertson told us in an exclusive backstage interview with B00mb0x. “It was necessary to pick the 210 most interesting victims. While of course every lost life has meaning, not every life makes good theater. I feel comfortable that each of the 3,000 victims, more or less, are represented by the 210 who were most valuable, from a dramaturgical point of view.”

Robertson was a junior at Bryn Mawr when the attacks occurred, studying Theater and Political Science. Although she was not actually in New York City on that fateful September day, she felt an unusual closeness to the victims and their families.

“9/11: I Remember!!!” author and performance artist Melissa Robertson

“I just couldn’t stop thinking about them,” Robertson said. “It was on my mind day and night. Who were these people? How did they live? Who did they love? It bothered me so much, I started taking time away from my studies so I could google their names.”

In a bold artistic decision, Robertson made no effort to get in touch with the actual victims’ families, preferring to get her information from the Internet. “I felt that learning more actual facts about these people would sully my own artistic project. In a way, by remaking their experiences into this art, I have created people who are more important than they were in their ‘real’ lives.”

Thanks to Ms. Robertson’s, 9/11: I Remember!!!, we will remember, too.

“9/11: I Remember!!!” will run through August 31st at the Collective Unconscious in downtown Manhattan. Tickets are $70. Family of victims of the World Trade Center attack are eligible to receive a 10% discount upon showing proper documentation.

New York Times writer Manohla Dargis dismissed Old Boy with such knee-jerk virulence that I had to go see it, even though I am also cautious about films that use extreme violence as a shortcut to pathos. My interpretation of her horror of the film is that high-art cannot be achieved with the use of shock and blood, and it is an increasingly common mistake to interpret a visceral repugnance to witnessing pain, suffering, mutilation et al as the rearrangement of the senses, the world-made-new euphoria that high art is supposed to provide.

It’s a valid point, but it also reminds me of the traditional discomfort that a previous generation consistently exhibits when viewing the art valued by their children. Old Boy is not a comic book; the focus is certainly on revenge and the sadistic urges it creates and amplifies, but the moments of revenge fulfilled are not in any way cheap tricks designed to thrill the viewer. The movie is extreme in the same way that all dramas are extreme; what is drama, after all, but recognizable people placed in unusual circumstances? Dargis hates Old Boy, but one could assume she appreciates Oedipus Rex.

In fact, in many ways Old Boy could be read as a 21st century remake of the Greek classic—the devastating disproportion of the punishment to the crime; the unrelenting drive to solve the mystery of his imprisonment in spite of all signs pointing to an answer he doesn’t want; the agonizing self-destruction upon discovering the truth; even a faint similarity in his name. Oh-Dae-Su. But I may be stretching it a bit here.

What is different about this version is that at the end, this movie believes in the redemptive power of love. Even when this love is used as a tool of revenge, it is proof that love is its own power, that it will find the beauty and joy in any situation no matter how ugly. It seeks its own level, and one argument could be that its level is grace and forgiveness.

Or is it? Another just as compelling argument could be given that love and truth cannot interact; one must destroy the other. In the case of Oh-Dae-Su’s nemesis, truth destroys love. For Oh-Dae-Su, however, love destroys truth. This may be why Oh-Dae-Su cuts out his tongue, while his torturer has a bad heart. The tongue and the heart cannot co-exist in one body.

But Oh-Dae-Su does extract a tattered and bloody bit of happiness from his experience, while his enemy ostensibly triumphs, but suffers terribly upon enacting his final revenge. This may be because of an early decision on Oh-Dae-Su’s part to reject revenge in favor of discovering the truth. His antagonist, however, was wholly focused on revenge and devoted his entire life to it. And when it was done, his life was meaningless.

Another major difference between the two plots is the substitution in Old Boy of hypnosis for fate. While this may not seem like a major difference, it does allow Oh-Dae-Su his ghastly, happy ending. Hypnosis does create the same horror of inevitability for contemporary audiences as the whimsy of the gods must have created thousands of years ago. Like Oedipus, Oh-Dae-Su suffers terribly due to circumstances for which he is blameless. At the end, however, he uses hypnosis to create his own happiness, which is a powerful comment on our ability to take fate into our own hands. Oh-Dae-Su, while a victim of fate at first, uses the tools of his suffering to relieve that suffering in the end.