44 Lights is a labor of love that has taken over two decades to create. The journey began on the morning of September 11th, 2001, the most beautiful day of the year. It started with cloudless blue skies and intense sunshine and ended as the most tragic day in modern American history. Tim Tuttle knew over thirty friends, neighbors and former co-workers, who didn’t come home. The play deals with the darkness of that day and the light and hope that we found in the aftermath.
Tim wrote his first song the night of 9/11 in an effort to communicate his pain and loss through music. Two weeks later, he recorded it with Jeremy Slansky in a New York studio. One song turned into many more and then a memorial concert on the first anniversary. Music From Ground Zero came to life from the ashes outside their office window in downtown Manhattan. The concerts became an annual act of remembrance at local venues.
Three CDs, twenty concerts and a documentary about the road they travelled to healing after such immense devastation, ultimately led Tim to writing a musical in 2023. Casting eleven actors and six musicians, he has created an experience for audiences to follow his personal story and find their own journey. Thousands saw and felt the same thing at Ground Zero as he did that morning, and for the first time it’s coming to the stage.
Love always conquers death. Our friends and family are never gone, they walk beside us, they live on in our hearts and mind. Forever.
