A free, one-night performance of Come From Away will be staged in New York next Sunday to mark 25 years since the 9/11 attacks and honour the small Newfoundland community whose response to the crisis inspired the hit musical.
Former Broadway and national tour cast members will reunite for Come From Away in Concert: Sounds of Remembrance at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in Lower Manhattan on September 13. The 100-minute open-air event will take place on the World Trade Center campus and is being presented as part of the centre’s commemorations of the anniversary.
The musical tells the story of Gander, where 38 international flights were diverted after the United States closed its airspace on September 11, 2001. Nearly 6,600 passengers and crew members suddenly found themselves stranded in a town whose population was only around 10,000.
Residents opened community buildings, schools and churches to the unexpected arrivals. They organised food, clothing and medical care, welcomed people into their homes and helped passengers contact relatives while the world struggled to understand what had happened in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
What began as an emergency response became a lasting bond between the people of Gander and the passengers who had been forced to land there. The story later became the award-winning musical written by Irene Sankoff and David Hein.
How Gander’s kindness became Come From Away
Sankoff and Hein were living in New York when the attacks took place. Although they were unaware of the events unfolding in Gander at the time, they experienced their own version of communal support as neighbours gathered to share food, music and news.
When the couple later travelled to Newfoundland to research the diverted flights, they interviewed passengers and local residents about what had happened. The material became the basis for the show’s book and lyrics, with the score drawing heavily on Newfoundland folk music and the tradition of kitchen gatherings.
At first, the writers were unsure whether the story should become a musical. Sankoff had imagined something closer to a documentary-style drama, while Hein was struck by the way music had helped the people of Gander cope with difficult times.
That changed during a benefit concert for people affected by 9/11. As the music began, Sankoff realised that the story’s mixture of fear, generosity and communal celebration could be carried by song.
“Music is how the Newfoundlanders get through hard times,” Hein said. “They have terrible winters out there, and they all come together in kitchen parties and play music and tell stories.”
Come From Away premiered in New York in 2017, with an ensemble of 12 actors playing the passengers, residents, airline staff and other people caught up in the events. It went on to win three Drama Desk Awards and a Tony Award for best director, before being produced in theatres around the world.
The writers combined some accounts to make the large cast of real-life stories coherent, but said they were careful not to embellish the central events. Several characters and songs were drawn closely from interviews, including Captain Beverley Bass, the first female captain for American Airlines, whose experience inspired the number Me and the Sky.
“The bravery of being kind”
One of the show’s central themes is the contrast between the passengers’ sense that Gander’s response was extraordinary and the locals’ belief that they were simply doing what anyone would have done.
The passengers were frightened, disorientated and often unaware of the scale of the attacks. The residents, meanwhile, had been warned that some of the diverted aircraft might pose a security threat. Despite that uncertainty, they cared for animals in the aircraft holds, prepared meals and invited strangers into their homes.
Hein described that willingness to help as “the bravery of being kind”. The phrase has helped the musical connect with audiences who were too young to remember 9/11, including schoolchildren learning about the attacks through a story that begins with people offering practical help.
“People are able to take this story and say, this is how you respond to a tragedy, and to always look for the helpers in the background,” Hein said.
The show’s first performance in Gander was particularly significant for the writers. Local audiences initially watched cautiously, concerned about how their community would be portrayed. But the response grew louder as familiar music and stories unfolded, with the crowd singing along to the Newfoundland folk song Heave Away.
Thousands of people stood and cheered before the performance had finished. For Sankoff and Hein, the reception confirmed that the musical had remained faithful to the community whose generosity had inspired it.
The production has since returned to Gander for a special 2026 season marking the 25th anniversary of the attacks. The Newfoundland and Labrador government said the staging would commemorate both the lives lost on 9/11 and the compassion shown by the province’s communities in the aftermath.
For the writers, the story’s continued reach lies in its ability to offer a different response to tragedy. Productions in countries including Japan, South Korea and Argentina have found parallels with their own experiences of disaster and communal recovery.
“We all want to be good people and want to be good to one another,” Hein said. “It’s been an incredible gift.”
