Walking into rehearsal with director Scott Malia and the cast of Enron, I was not expecting to see Vincent Sekafetz, class of 2025, playing Jeff Skilling, toss imaginary pieces of meat to velociraptors. As I later learned, Enron’s chief financial officer and convicted felon Andy Fastow did call his debt holders “raptors.” Dramatizing the rise and eventual scandal surrounding the energy company Enron in the late 1990s and early 2000s, British playwright Lucy Prebble embraces the inherent theatricality of the original story through various non-historical elements like an original female character and the velociraptors. The College of the Holy Cross’s production embraces both the reality and imagination of the piece to educate a college-aged theatre audience born after the collapse of Enron and an economics audience less inclined to attend the theatre. The department’s work humanizes the characters so that college students see themselves in Skilling and Fastow on stage.
The historical energy company began in the 1980s with ownership in natural gas pipelines. Eventually, it expanded into creating a derivatives market for energy, helping companies lock in a lower price today for the gas they may need to buy at an otherwise higher price months later. As Enron grew as a company, it began to take on more risky ventures and committed fraud to cover the fact that many of these ventures were not profitable. Enron’s bankruptcy in 2001 spurred a giant investigation with several criminal convictions but also led to more reform in economic and accounting practices. Many of the scandal’s details are very technically based; several of the investors were unaware of or confused by the hidden Enron practices. Rather than confounding the audience, however, Prebble’s play brings clarity to these events in an entertaining fashion.
Unique staging and scenic design are the first layer that capture the Holy Cross audience. The seating is “tennis-court-ish,” as the scenic designer, Anshuman Bhatia, described it to me. This is code for typical tennis court seating, with two twists: one portion of the seats is shorter on the side than the other, and both seating banks are closer to the middle of the playing space, making the performance area narrower. This is the closest the Prior audience has ever been to the action. Along the walls are projected screens that can instantly move the audience to distinct locations like an office party or Andy’s underground lair. In the initial design, stock tickers flashed along the screens for the entirety of the show; in the final version, the tickers appear occasionally to highlight their importance in key moments. Together, the tickers and projected locations increase a sense of familiarity for audiences inherently interested in economics and add depth of storytelling for the rest.
Using the expertise of experienced professors from the Economics and Accounting Department, Scott Malia brings clarity to the now twenty-year-old story for a modern audience. To answer his and the cast’s questions about definitions of terms or context, Malia created a shared document with these professors. One example of a requested definition is “mark-to-market accounting,” which Skilling mentions in Act 1. This accounting practice attempts to record assets and liabilities according to their current price rather than original price, and in the case of Enron, inflate profits. After receiving responses from his fellow faculty members, Malia would relay them to the actors. Through acting in, working backstage for, or watching the show, a wide range of Holy Cross students became more knowledgeable about economics in a captivating way.
By casting this show with college students, Malia reframes the actions and consequences of fraud by forty-year-old businessmen through the lens of young people. A twenty-two-year-old Jeff seems more youthful and naïve in upholding his perfect theory, while Andy is sympathetic through his vulnerability and weakness in the face of his colleagues. By watching characters portrayed by their peers, students are allowed to reckon with their own flaws and how internal and external pressure can lead to more risk-taking. Enron began with good intentions, but those same intentions collapsed when the company cut corners to reach its goals. How often do our own intentions lead to harm? The audience will relate anew, no matter what their level of familiarity with the source material.
My favorite way that the production draws the audience in is the aforementioned raptors. With sharp claws, glowing yellow eyes, and snapping jaws, they are hungry, they are dangerous; they give the literal meaning for the hedges they are supposed to represent. Through the heightened level of theatricality, they raise the stakes, making the debt easier to synthesize with technical jargon. During rehearsal, I noted the height difference between the actors playing the raptors and Rowan Laufik playing Andy. Through their body language, the raptors protect and care for him. Unlike the rest of the people he encounters, the raptors give him power and a sense of belonging. Ultimately, they humanize him; no one cares about him but them. Rather than being a stereotypical evil guy, Andy becomes someone just trying to fit in, with whom an audience of all ages can sympathize. And of course, it’s fun watching raptors chase other characters off-stage.
Speaking with both Bhatia and Malia while the play was still in rehearsal, I did wonder if the heightened theatricality of the piece might turn some economics-minded people away from the show. On the one hand, the stylization is a real departure from the typical way economists construct meaning within their discipline. On the other hand, for many in the field, the Enron scandal is overly familiar; one accounting student informed me his class once was assigned the documentary of Enron, only for the students to skip it as they had all seen it before. Yet this play is not a documentary; it’s time for something new. In Prebble’s drama and Malia’s production, the style is set up from the opening, so the audience has time to adjust. The original story has already been told and retold again; this play’s theatricality keeps the content fresh and accessible rather than overused.
At the publication of this article, Holy Cross’s production of Enron has concluded. Whether you saw the show or not, I hope these reflections invite you to consider the depth and intentions of the piece. This play critiques a common ‘90s practice of deception in a comedic way. Rather than reject the tale as dusty and irrelevant, I hope its recent and future audiences recognize the modernity of its message. Someday, you may be stuck trying to hide the raptors of your own creation.
A special thank you to Anshuman Bhatia and Scott Malia for the interviews, as well as the cast of Enron for letting me sit in on a rehearsal.