Live Arts Maryland to Mark 25th Anniversary of September 11 with Free Screening of Daron Hagen’s 9/10: Love Before the Fall - FREE ADMISSION

Annapolis, MD — On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Live Arts Maryland will present a free public screening of composer and filmmaker Daron Hagen’s 9/10: Love Before the Fall on Thursday, September 10 at 7 p.m. at the Live Arts Studio in Annapolis Mall. Hagen will be in attendance and will join the audience for a conversation following the screening.

Taking place exactly 25 years after the evening depicted in the film, the event offers an opportunity to remember September 11 through a deeply human and artistic lens. Set in an Italian restaurant in New York’s Little Italy on September 10, 2001, the 58-minute operafilm follows four friends sharing dinner, memories, conversation, and plans for the future.

The audience knows what the characters cannot: all four work in the World Trade Center and will die the following morning. Rather than depicting the attacks themselves, 9/10: Love Before the Fall turns its attention to the night before and the ordinary moments that become extraordinary in retrospect. Interwoven with the myths of Orpheus and Charon, the work becomes a meditation on love, mortality, remembrance, and leave-taking.

“Most commemorations of September 11 understandably begin with what happened the next morning,” said J. Ernest Green, Artistic Director of Live Arts Maryland. “Daron’s film asks us to look instead at the evening before—at friendship, work, love, plans and all of the ordinary things that make up a life. Twenty-five years later, that feels like a particularly meaningful way to remember the people who were lost.”

Following the screening, Hagen will speak with the audience about the creation of the film and the emerging art form he calls “operafilm,” bringing music, screenplay, cinematography, editing, and performance together as elements of a single artistic work. Hagen wrote, composed, directed, and edited 9/10, which forms the middle portion of his Bardo Trilogy.

The film features Robert Frankenberry, Gilda Lyons, CeCe Jude Hastreiter, and Carlos Jaquez Gonzalez as its four central characters, with Roger Zahab as Charon, Barbara Grecki as Lulu, and Cameron Dammann as Orfeo. 9/10: Love Before the Fall has also received recognition at numerous independent film festivals, including honors for its score, direction, ensemble, and feature filmmaking.The evening reflects Live Arts Maryland’s continuing commitment to creating experiences that bring different artistic worlds together and invite audiences into the creative process.

“Live Arts has always been interested in what happens when different worlds meet—classical music and Broadway, opera and theater, live music and film, established masterworks and something completely new,” Green said. “The Studio allows us to bring those experiences right into the community and, just as importantly, to let audiences talk directly with the people creating them.”

The September 10 program invites the community to gather through art, music, and conversation to reflect on the lives behind a moment that changed history and on the love, relationships, and humanity that existed before the fall.

The screening of 9/10: Love Before the Fall will take place Thursday, September 10 at 7 p.m. at the Live Arts Studio at Annapolis Mall, 2002 Annapolis Mall Road, Suite 1700,

Annapolis, MD 21401. Admission is free.--