Get to Know the Playwright
Nine Years, opening January 29, 2026, in the BYU Black Box theatre, follows the relationship between Alan and Sophie throughout nine years of knowing each other, and how a new procedure to erase memories impacts that relationship. I sat down with the playwright, Michael Combs, to learn about his process and how the play came to be.
What was the impetus of Nine Years? What was that first spark?
I was thinking about a lot of the people in my life and thinking “What would it be like if I didn’t have those people?” In the way that, if I couldn’t remember having these people in my life, how would that change who I am as I person? And that kind of struck me.
You talked about finding inspiration in the people around you, does that come up often in your work?
Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. One of the things you hear in writing a lot is “write what you know.” And while I don’t 100% agree with that, I think it just happens sometimes anyway. Because as I mentioned, those people that make that impression on you, that make these memories, how you experience them, how you go through them, is how you’re going to recount them.
How has Nine Years changed since your first draft? What is the biggest difference?
One of the earlier concepts for it was more episodic, where it wasn’t just about the two characters, but rather it was a bunch of little snippets from different people’s lives and how they remembered specific things, and how not having those memories would impact them. And then I felt like focusing around two people for the duration of the titular “nine years” felt like a much more interesting way to explore the concept.
So was Nine Years the title before you made that change?
No. I used to call it Do You Remember? But every single time someone thought of the song, “Do you remember the 21st Night of September?” and so I couldn’t have that.
The plot of Nine Years hinges on a procedure to erase memories. What kind of research did you do in order to portray this in your play? Did you look at scientific research? Did you look at other fictional portrayals of memory erasure?
When I originally wrote Nine Years, I had no idea there was other media that portrayed memory erasure. But, many friends enlightened me. However, I did actually do a lot of research. In some of my earlier drafts, I had a much more in-depth look. I think we had the procedure done onstage, and I literally had listed multiple drugs that affected memory loss and controlled specific memories and dampened different emotions. I don’t remember any of it now, but my notes when I originally wrote this play? I might as well have been a neuroscience student. I did a lot of research because I wanted it to feel, and not just feel, but be a future that is entirely possible, and not just something sci-fi.
What excites you about seeing your play staged for the first time?
I’ve been pretty hands off with it, I want to say. I’ve been getting little notes from Isabel [the director], but for the most part, one of the things I wanted to see is what would happen if I just said “here’s my script, do as you will with it,” and then see how much that affects how much I like it as the person who wrote it, and see if there are things that I want to change in the writing based on how its done, or if there’s things I’m really surprised by that I didn’t see in the script that they did.
What is one thing you’d like audiences to take away from Nine Years?
I want people to value their friends. [Nine Years] is a love-letter to the mundane moments of our lives. All the little things. There’s a scene of them being at a movie night together, which is ultimately an “insignificant” moment in your life, but it still can mean the world when you’re with certain people. And it’s just capturing that essence and reflecting on all these little precious moments that you share with the people that are important to you.
What is next for you? What are you working on now?
Right now I’m working on a full-lenth play called Ex Nihilo. You may have heard the buzzword “AI” recently. It’s a play about a family who get an AI robot assistant in their house and how having access to something that can essentially do everything for them changes their lives.
What is one piece of advice you would give to a beginner playwright?
I mentioned the “write what you know” thing earlier. I would say write what you are passionate about, regardless of how out there it seems, maybe it doesn’t feel like it should be a play, but who cares? Try it anyway and see if it works or not. You never know unless you try things, so just be willing to write something that you’re excited to write about and explore.
