Special thanks to our inspiring friend Donna Lee Iffla who pointed us in the direction of the story of Cassandra and sent us her copy of Christa Wolf's eponymous novel. Christa Wolf used the story to reflect on Cold War Europe in the shadow of the bomb. We felt empowered by her treatment of Cassandra to fashion the material to our own ends.

In the ancient myth Cassandra was the Trojan princess whose gift was to foresee the future and whose curse was never to be believed.

She is simply the starting point for the play we've created. We've used some basic elements from the old story - that Troy was under siege for ten years; that she had brothers who fought and died for Troy; that she was raped by one of the victors.

But we're only interested in the source material in so far as it reflects on our own times. We've re-formed and added to the basic story to highlight the questions we want to address.

We created the play in 2002 in the shadow of 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan. George W Bush's speech writers have contributed to our script. As have chat-room participants from a number of quite disturbing web-sites. But our story is essentially original and trying to refer it either to the ancient myth or to a literal reading of contemporary events would be confusing. Everything that needs to be known about the world of the play is contained within the play itself.

Plays necessarily change their meaning as the world changes. Cassandra has different reverberations now than it did when it was first conceived. But, unfortunately, it seems to become more potent - and Cassandra more prescient - day by day.