The title is inspired by Donald Rumsfeld's response to widespread looting in Baghdad: "Stuff happens and it’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.” (April 11, 2003) The play presents a mix of viewpoints, including arguments for and against the attack on Iraq.
"[2] Hare also stated that the dialogue is not “knowingly untrue” but he had to sometimes “use his imagination” to cover events that were not recorded verbatim, admitting that his play is not a documentary as such.
[2] Scene 4: The National Security Council starts the meeting talking about the issues in the Middle East, specifically what's going on between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The CIA believe that Iraq has a plant at an abandoned warehouse to produce chemical or biological weapons.
The journalist rants about how Americans ignore how lucky they are to be able to have freedom and instead, they choose to fight with each other and disagree with each other constantly.
"[2] Scene 7: The War Cabinet meets at Camp David to discuss future plans going forward.
Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld believe that the U.S. should take action on Iraq since it will be less of a risk than Afghanistan and still be able to send a message to other countries.
When the British were able to track down Bin Laden, they were ordered to pull out which gave him the chance to go into a different hiding spot off the radar.
The British decide that they will no longer back up America after these actions because they believe there wasn't a legal cause for attacking Iraq.
[2] Scene 11: Bush believes that since there are new styles of threats since the UN Charter was created, that means there should be new ways of thinking.
[2] Act 2- Scene 12: The NSC reassembles and Cheney says that the story should be known as the “Crisis at the UN” so that it is no longer about America's wrongdoing but instead makes it about the UN and whether they can deliver or not.
Bush addresses to the general assembly that the first time the world finds out that Saddam has nuclear weapons will be when he uses one and it becomes too late.
The British Parliament believe that Bush will prematurely attack Iraq just to gain more power and oil.
Debate breaks out among the American officials about whether the UN is useful and if they should wait on Blair to get permission from him in order to carry out their actions.
[2] Scene 21: There have been over 400 inspections across over 300 different sites and there still hasn't been any sign of Iraq having any weapons capable of mass destruction.
There are 100 million people protesting across 600 cities demanding that the inspectors get more time to finish their mission instead of just going straight to war.
Blair announces that the attempts to pass the new resolution will no longer continue because Chirac provided pointless diplomacy.
[2] Stuff Happens had its world premiere at the Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre in London on 1 September 2004 [2] and has subsequently been performed at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum (with Keith Carradine and Julian Sands) in June 2005 and at Sydney's Seymour Centre (with Rhys Muldoon and Greg Stone) in July 2005.
The cast featured Jeffrey DeMunn as Donald Rumsfeld, Zach Grenier as Dick Cheney, Peter Francis James as Colin Powell and Byron Jennings as Tony Blair.
[3] A one-off revival of the play took place as a rehearsed reading at the National Theatre to mark the release of the Chilcot inquiry on July 6, 2016.