San Diego’s OnWord Theatre Stages War Crimes Drama ‘9 Circles’
The production, based on a real 2006 conviction, features a concentric seating design and closes the company’s second season.
By Tyler Khalil ·
OnWord Theatre is staging a play that seats its audience in two concentric circles around the actors, a physical arrangement designed to mimic the outer rings of Hell. The immersive production of Bill Cain’s “9 Circles” opens at the Light Box Theatre in the Arts District Liberty Station on Friday, November 6, and runs through November 22.
The play, written in 2010, follows Daniel Edward Reeves, a fictional former American soldier on trial for war crimes committed in Iraq. Cain based the narrative on the 2006 trial of Steven Dale Green, a U.S. soldier convicted of raping and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her parents and 6-year-old sister. The legal proceedings in the play serve as the backdrop for Reeves’ psychological descent.
Martie Gobel, the producing artistic director of the two-year-old theater company, initially began discussions about the production two years ago. She cited the timing with November, National Veterans and Military Families Month, as a factor in bringing the work to the stage now. Gobel, who is the mother of three grown sons, said she wanted to explore the impact of combat on young men whose brains are still developing.
“For sure it would break a young brain,” Gobel said. “Young men’s frontal lobe doesn’t fully form until they’re 25. The play begs the question what are we doing to these young men?”
David Cecsarini, the longtime artistic director of Next Act Theatre in Milwaukee, is directing the production. He had originally planned to stage “9 Circles” in 2020, but the pandemic forced a shift to a filmed online version in 2021. He recently retired from Next Act and joined Gobel in San Diego to present the work for a live audience for the first time.
Eli Wood, a San Diego actor and U.S. Naval Academy graduate who won the 2025 Actor of the Year award from the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle, stars as Reeves. Cecsarini noted that the role requires a sustained performance as the character faces prosecutors, defense attorneys, and his own conscience. Asmar Fontenot and Tanner Vydos will co-star, each performing up to three roles.
The company has launched a $10,000 fundraising campaign to support its third season, which Gobel hopes to announce early next year. Tickets for the run are priced between $30 and $40, while the preview on Thursday, November 5, is pay what you can with a suggested donation of $5 to $20.
