how 9/11 effected the world and the stock market



The opening of the (NYSE) was delayed after the first plane crashed into the world trade centres North Tower, and trading for the day was canceled after the second plane crashed into the South Tower. nasdaq also canceled trading. The New York Stock Exchange was then evacuated as well as nearly all banks and financial institutions on wall street and in many cities across the country. The london stock exchange and other stock exchanges around the world were also closed down and evacuated in fear of follow-up terrorist attacks. The New York Stock Exchange remained closed until the following Monday. This was the third time in history that the NYSE experienced prolonged closure, the first time being in the early months of world war 1 and the second being March 1933 during the great depression. 



i feel as if 9/11 changed the world, i personally feel lucky that i couldnt really understand what was going on at the time, but as a grew up and understood the whole situation i realised the devistation this had caused the world and the amount of family's that where torn apart by this, i cant even begin to imagine what it was like for the people in that situation and also how hard it was for the world to watch this on the tv or listen to on the radio as it was happening, and the moment everyone's heart dropped when the second plane hit the second tower. so for the scene in the play i feel we all had to go to a dark place to portray the devistation this has caused.

Along with 1.4 million tons of debris removed, 19,435 body parts were recovered from the WTC after 9/11.

 The real story

Jeffrey Skilling
Police photograph of Skilling (2004)

CEO of Enron

In 1990, Skilling was hired away from McKinsey by Kenneth Lay to work at Enron Corporation. Skilling was named chairman and chief executive officer of Enron Finance Corporation and became the chairman of Enron Gas Services Company in 1991. In 1997, he was promoted to president and chief operating officer. In that capacity, Skilling pushed an aggressive investment strategy, helping make Enron the biggest wholesaler of gas and electricity, with $27 billion traded in a quarter. He was named CEO of Enron, replacing Lay, in 2001.

Bankruptcy and Felony Charges

Slowly but surely, Enron built a house of cards, recording anticipated future profits as actual gains in order to inflate its stock price. In August 2001, amidst the California energy crises, Skilling unexpectedly resigned and sold almost $60 million in Enron shares. The company declared bankruptcy in December 2001.

In 2006, Skilling was convicted of multiple federal felony charges, including insider trading, securities fraud, and making false statements to auditors. At the time of its collapse in December 2001, Enron's bankruptcy was the largest in U.S. history, costing investors billions and 20,000 employees their jobs and in many cases their life savings.

On October 13, 2009, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear two questions presented by Skilling's appeal. The Court subsequently scheduled and heard argument March 1, 2010.

The first challenge by Skilling's defense was whether or not the federal "honest services fraud" statute (title 18 of the United States Code, section 1346) required the government to prove that Skilling's conduct was intended to achieve "private gain" (instead of being intended to advance his employer's interests); and, if not, if this statute is unconstitutionally vague.The Court heard two other cases about the same statute on December 8, several months before it heard Skilling's appeal

Fastow was initially charged with 78 counts of fraud, mostly connected to his central role in a web of off-balance sheet entities that did business with Enron, disguised the company’s financial condition, and made Fastow tens of millions. He ultimately pled guilty to two counts, forfeited $30 million, and agreed to testify against his former bosses as a government witness.Since leaving prison in 2011 and resuming life with his wife Lea and two sons in Houston, where Enron was based, Fastow has kept a low profile. Now 51, he works 9-to-5 as a document-review clerk at the law firm that represented him in civil litigation. Fastow has given 14 unpaid talks, mostly at universities, usually with no press allowed. The first came at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He volunteered to speak to students after reading a column on ethics by the dean of the business school. Fastow has also spoken at Tufts, Tulane, and Dartmouth and is scheduled to address a United Nations group in the fall. In Las Vegas, dressed in a blazer and open shirt, Fastow stood at the podium a bit grim-faced, his speech sometimes halting. “I’m not used to giving talk to groups this big,” he explained. “I apologize to you if I feel nervous -- if I appear nervous.”

http://fortune.com/2013/07/01/the-confessions-of-andy-fastow/

http://www.biography.com/people/jeffrey-skilling-235386#ceo-of-enron

(source from wiki)

evaluation of the first performance




last night was our first performance of Enron and i can honestly say as a whole the play went really well and i felt as if the audience enjoyed it as much as we did. Although there where many mistakes in this performance some of which were are fault as the actors but the main problem was the tech mistakes and know one should take a lot of blame for that has the tech for our common ground had an extremely hard job and still did very well, but the tech that night really let us down as i feel our play relies on the technical aspect alot and quite dependent on that working so when it didnt work we still carried on but i feel as if the audience may have been a bit confused about for example for the 9/11 scene the crash noise happened before i even got on stage and that noise was meant to happen at the end of the scene. Another thing i was really disapointed in was that the microphone wasn't turned of back stage and the audience could her everything which probably distracted them from the whole play and i feel as if that the blame should be on us and not as much the tech people even though it was their fault for not turning off the microphone it was us who were making noises and talking in the corridor and that was a complete amateur mistake and shouldve been more proffesional and one final thing was we felt as if the electricity wasnt working but that wasnt because of us it was just the technical stuff involved in such as the balls not turning on etc so were going to change that, having said all this i was still really happy with the piece everybody gave it there all on stage and even though there where a couple of miner mistakes here and there we carried and one and the audience didnt even notices them for example when Sam didnt have a cleanex Olivia used his tie and i thought that was actually better, and it felt awesome at the end when we got a full standing ovation after all that had work the first show was done.





evaluation of the second performance 


tonight went extremely well, it was a completley different vibe the second night as it was a 4.30 show and all was moslty filled with are mates from different strands coming to support us. The technical stuff was alot better tonight there was still a couple of mistakes on there part but nothing noticable to the audience watching. I feel like we all put alot of energy in tonight and maybe that was because we had all of our freinds watching us and that helped us alot because of the support we were getting. there was one big mistake that happened today though and that was the physical office sequence when adjei broke the table and hurt his foot, this mistake didnt ruin the scene in anyway though as we all played it off so well that half the people watching didnt even notice anything happened because as soon as it happened i think was toby who just got rid of the broken piece of table straight away and the scene carried on as normal, and sam did extremly well has he had to somehow walk on this table and he did it without loosing character. i also felt as if i was better in tonights performance as i felt really chilled and just wanted to enjoy it and put my all into and i think everyone felt the same tonight.




evaluation of the last performance


the last show is over! tonight was the biggest night for us all because not only was this are last performance but we completely sold out and that put on the extra pressure we needed to make tonight an amazing and unforgettable night and we accomplished that, we all put 100% we just wanted to end it with a high. and there was one scene where the gun still didnt go off for the last shot this happened in the other shows by the way and will just ended up strangling the raptor Sam to death and that was really effective, the only thing that was a bit annoying was that atmosphere wasnt as good as the second show but maybe thats because they were all are mates and the last show had older audience members but haven said that the atmosphere was still good. i have really enjoyed being in this show and there was no other one i would of rather been in and finally all of our hard work and dedication had payed off!

sidestretch 

This was by far the most useful rehearsal teqnique we used for the play, it put all of us in the zone and the mindset to get on the play, i aslo feel as it helped alot as it connected us as we did it at the start of the lesson at the start of every enron rehearsal. the first thing we would do was get into warrior pose and this was having a straight back with bent knees and arm streched we would then stretch to either side in a count of 8, point are bodies in a diagonal shape and get down to pushup position then roll slowly on to are backs and lift our arms and legs in sort of a dead creature shape. we would then lower them and roll over to our front would then stretch are arms lifting our bodies up so there where in a sort of curved position and then look to side to side with dead eyes, this real helped i feel especially with the people who played the raptors. after that we would go in prayer position and very slowly sit up on are knees, this is what i feel was the really crucial part as the next part was when we all stood up individually when you felt the moment was right, after everyone was stood up we would then wait for the director to shout huh and we would all try to respond at the same time even though it is practaly impossible we wanted to see how far we could go with it, the excersise changed whilst going further with the rehearsal process as instead for been saying huh we would all say it collectively.

another warm exercise we did was walking in the space whilst saying flat back and wide in  an american accent and every now and then you would stop bend you knees but your hands um and letting out an ah sound it had to sort of be a natural sound so there shouldnt be any restraining i felt this was a really useful teqnique because it was an easy and simple way to warm up our american accents and get us into character.

Enron Corporation was an American vitality, products, and administrations organization situated in Houston, Texas. It was established in 1985 as the aftereffect of a merger between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both generally little provincial organizations in the U.S. Prior to its chapter 11 on December 2, 2001, Enron utilized roughly 20,000 staff and was one of the world's significant power, normal gas, interchanges and mash and paper organizations, with asserted incomes of about $101 billion amid 2000. Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six back to back years.

building the ensemble 

the ensemble in general was the thing we focused on the most and i also thought this was the hardest thing we had to do as we had a lot to do and a lot of difficult things to and if the ensemble wasnt up to standard, the play could still go on but with out the ensemble i feel as if the play wouldve lost its magic. i feel one reason why the ensemble work went really well was because we bonded through the rehearsals for example us as the ensemble directed  ourselves so it felt more free and natural because we were doing stuff that we all collectivly agreed with and if something went wrong or didnt work we didnt complain we just tried something else and i thought that having that freedom of letting us devise some of the physical work bonded us and as an ensemble that is key.


As for building the exercise we did many exercises like the spooning exercise where you would lead someone around the room by holding there neck and once you let go they would fall to the ground, and when someone fell to the ground they would lie in position and someone would lie next to them spooning them and carrying them over there body so that they can both stand and the process would keep on going until we were told to stop i found this really effective at first i found it a bit funny that i had to spoon my fellow piers but as the process went on i feel as if it really bonded us as an ensemble.

My Characters

Trader 6

my first character was trader 6, and with this chracter i had to do alot of reaserach behind it and and analyse what a stock trader is and how the act, i mainly did this by simply watching videos of traders at work and also watching films such as the wolf of wall street, and even though i had watched it many times before i could really focus into the characters and sort of savagary they all have in them, as i did more research i learnt that being in the stock market is a really dog eat dog world as everyone wants to be the top dog and make the most money, the way i pictured it was the more money you get the bigger balls you have. I also found out whilst in the reahersal process is that the whole show in general was very tetestorone full as in was mainly a male class and that really added to the atmosphere. As i  got down the basics of my character i could now focus on him deeply and add character traits such as accents and the way he would move around the stage, my first insinct with this was to have a loud new york accent and move around the stage franticly, but as i read the lines of my character i found a much better suited role for my character "the chill trader" i accomplished this with the help of my directer and i started to use and californian accent and after that i really felt like i got to grips with my character.

What did the company Enron do?

Enron started life as a regional natural gas pipeline company, the result of a merger between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth in 1985. Lay was credited with transforming Enron into the world's largest energy trading company and America's seventh-biggest corporation.

What was the Enron scandal about?

The Enron scandal, revealed in October 2001, eventually led to the bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas, and the de facto dissolution of Arthur Andersen, which was one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world.

(both sources taken from wikipidia)

Hewett

This was my other character part of the ramsy and hewett law firm. I liked this character as it challenged me as to be honest it was quite a bland character not that I am complaining it just needed somthing to make it different and not boring so me and my partner Toby tried doing things to make them stand out the first idea was to be like Donald trump in the way he talked and moved and too essagerate that but that didn't really work out as we weren't projecting enough with the accent as we could fully get the accent down but then our director Ben gave us the idea as robots and as soon as we did we knew that was the perfect way to make them stand out



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SPEs that Flourish in Loopholes

Many of Enron’s troubles can be traced to a number of special purposes entities (SPE), dubbed the Raptors, that Enron established to shield itself from mark-to-market losses in its growing equity investment business. When these investments went south, Enron’s attempts to shore the Raptors up with its own stock proved to be a temporary solution at best. The presence of Enron’s CFO on the board of directors of the SPE that funded the Raptors, LJM2, probably ensured that the entire house of cards would eventually come down. The authors detail the byzantine structures of these SPEs and demonstrate how existing GAAP requirements, though somewhat ambiguous, should have led to different treatment.