Filmmaker and playwright Neil LaBute is ready to use the Sept. 11 attacks as the background for his works.

“The Mercy Seat,” a new play by LaBute, has a theme as old as civilization ? adultery ? but a setting quite near in our memories ? New York, the day after the terrorist attacks.

“It’s the kind of relationship drama that I have investigated in other writing, but the kind of moral choices they are making in their relationship and in their lives is influenced because of that day,” he said.

LaBute, a Kansas University alumnus, is known for his movies ? “Friends and Neighbors,” “Nurse Betty,” “In the Company of Men” and the recently released “Possession” ? and such plays as “The Shape of Things.”