9 Circles

9 Circles opens at Light Box Theatre on November 5, running through November 22. It's the San Diego premiere of the drama by Bill Cain, a Jesuit priest and playwright who wrote the piece in 2010. The production is directed by David Cecsarini, with OnWord artistic director Marti Gobel and local actor Eli Wood co-starring.

The title and structure come from Inferno, the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic The Divine Comedy, in which Dante descends through the nine circles of Hell. Here, the circles are the bureaucracy and the judicial system that a fictionalized American ex-soldier has to navigate as he stands trial for war crimes committed in Iraq. The story is based on the real-life case of Steven Dale Green, who was convicted alongside four other active-duty soldiers for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family.

Critics have praised the play for its nuanced portrait of the instigator's antisocial disorder and for its depiction of the psychological impacts of war. It's a contemporary morality play that takes a real-world horror and runs it through a classic structure, so it's as much about the legal process as it is about the crime itself. This is the first time it's been staged in San Diego; it previously played in 2021 at Next Act Theatre in Milwaukee.

Light Box Theatre is at 2590 Truxtun Road, Suite 205, in San Diego. The run starts November 5 and goes through November 22.