Title:Alumni collaborate on stage play about Army Special Forces on 9/11

Though they took different paths after graduation, Bill Raskin (C’89, G’11), Ray Ficca (C’89), and Michael Hare (C’89) recently reunited for a new project.

Following a 20-year career in Army Special Forces, Raskin wrote a play called The Team Room which captures three days in the life of an Army Special Forces team that responds in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The play explores the country’s rapid transition from peace to war, and the experience of young special operators in their first combat deployment.

Raskin’s Georgetown classmates immediately wanted to get involved. Ficca, the play’s director, started his career as a Broadway actor, but returned to DC to serve as president of the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts. Hare, the play’s producer, is a career business executive with a passion for nonprofit arts.

Raskin started writing at age 44 as a way of searching for new meaning after the intensity of Army life. His first project was a novel called Cardiac Gap. “I grew up in Texas and there’s a syndrome there with former high school quarterbacks feeling like the best part of their lives may be over by the age of 20,” he shared. “So, with my early ‘retirement,’ writing has been a very meaningful way to do something positive and constructive.”

Raskin explained that his Georgetown education helped him “capture the overseas ground truth in writing for major U.S. commands and policy makers. Even in an era of video communication, no one’s going to go back and look at those video archives, so you’d better be able to capture it in an understandable way in writing, with facts and recommendations that someone might make use of.”

The Team Room premiered this October at The Keegan Theatre in Washington, DC. Net proceeds from the play will go to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which supports children of fallen special operators who died in the line of duty.