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Inherit The Wind
by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Directed by Stephen J. Lavezza
August 19 – September 18, 2005
(Opens August 20, 2005)
Friday & Saturday at 8:00 P.M.; Sunday at 7:00 P.M.
The Bug Theatre
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Preview Performance
Two-for-One General Admission Tickets
Friday, August 19, 2006
Single Seat Tickets for Inherit The Wind
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• Anniversary Production – 2005 marks the 80th Anniversary
of the Scopes Monkey Trial and the 50th Anniversary of Inherit the Wind's
original Broadway production
• "The portrait it draws of an explosive episode in American culture…remains
as fresh as it ever was." — New York Times
• "A tidal wave of a drama…" — NY
World-Telegram & Sun
A high school teacher is jailed for teaching Darwin's famous book, Origin
of the Species, and two of the most famous lawyers in the country are brought
in to represent the opposing sides, making this case the trial-of-the-century.
Deemed "one of the truly great American dramas" of the 20th century,
this exciting and absorbing play based on the famous Scopes trial is as
relevant today as it was fifty years ago.
More Info:
About the Playwrights:
Jerome Lawrence (July 14, 1915 –)
Robert E. Lee (October 15, 1918 – July 8, 1994)
Jerome Lawrence was born July 14, 1915, in Cleveland, Ohio, into a literary family. His father, Samuel, owned a printing company, and his mother, Sarah Rogen Lawrence, was a poet. Jerome Lawrence studied writing with Eugene C. Davis. After graduating from Glenville High School in 1933, Lawrence left Cleveland for Columbus and studied with Harlan Hatcher, Herman Miller, and Robert Newdick at Ohio State University. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Ohio State in 1937. During the following year, Lawrence held two newspaper jobs in small Ohio towns before heading off to Beverly Hills, where he worked until 1939 as a radio station continuity editor. When his radio job ended, Lawrence began graduate studies at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), but he took a position as a senior staff writer at CBS at the same time; the job eventually eclipsed his education. Lawrence stayed with CBS, working in both New York and Los Angeles until 1942, when he served in the army during World War II. While enlisted, Lawrence served as a correspondent, was promoted to staff sergeant, and earned a battle star from the Secretary of War. He, along with friend and business partner Robert E. Lee, also helped found the Armed Forces Radio Service.
Robert Edwin Lee was born on October 15, 1918 not far from Jerome Lawrence, in a distant suburb of Cleveland called Elyria. His father, Claire Melvin Lee, was an engineer, and his mother, Elvira Taft Lee, was a teacher. After Lee graduated from Elyria High School, he studied at Northwestern University in Chicago in 1934 before transferring to Ohio Wesleyan in 1935, where he was a student from 1935 to 1937. Lee also took a job as a technician at a local observatory, but after just two years, Lee left both school and the job behind. He took a directing job at a Cleveland radio station until he was drawn once again to higher education, and spent a year at Cleveland's Western Reserve University. Once again, Lee left school and worked at an ad agency in New York City. In 1942, he enlisted in the Air Force where he made one last attempt at college and studied for a year at Drake University. Lee never earned a higher degree, but his participation in World War II brought him into contact with his writing partner, Jerome Lawrence.
Lawrence and Lee are co-founders of the American Playwrights Theatre and the Margo Jones Award. Lee has been involved with both academic and professional theater communities, working as a director and teacher as well as a playwright. Lawrence's interest in drama extends back to his high school and college days, when he acted in and directed school and summer theater productions. Working together on Armed Forces Radio, Lawrence and Lee produced the official Army-Navy radio programs for D-Day, VE-Day, and VJ-Day. After the war, they created radio programs for CBS, including the series, "Columbia Workshop." Lawrence and Lee also co-wrote radio plays including The Unexpected (1951), Song of Norway (1957), Shangri-La (1960), a radio version of Inherit the Wind (1965), and Lincoln the Unwilling Warrior (1974). Lee was awarded a Peabody Award for a UN radio series in 1948.
From late 1940’s, Lawrence and Lee collaborated on writing many plays that would become classics of American drama. Their first theatrical collaboration was writing the book for Look, Ma, I'm Dancin'! which premiered at the Adelphi Theatre in New York in 1948. Their second play, Inherit the Wind, was not produced on Broadway until 1955. Margo Jones, a Dallas producer, agreed to give the play a preview in Texas. The play opened at Theatre '55 on January 10, 1955; its success in Dallas lead to the play's opening at the National Theatre in New York on April 21, 1955.
Though Inherit the Wind may be Lawrence and Lee's best known play, their collaboration continued for decades. Together, they wrote the plays Auntie Mame (1956), The Gang's All Here (1959), A Call on Kuprin (1961), and the book to the musical Mame (1966). Lawrence directed the first arena production of Mame in Sacramento in 1968. Lawrence and Lee also wrote Dear World (1969), The Incomparable Max (1969), which Lawrence directed, and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail (1971). The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail premiered at Lawrence's alma mater, Ohio State, as the Centennial Play for the American Playwrights Theatre. Since its premiere, this play has had more than 2,500 performances worldwide, making it the most widely produced play of our time.
In 1990, Lawrence and Lee were named Fellows of American Theatre at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. That same year, their final collaboration, Whisper in the Mind, was produced at Arizona State University and in 1994 at the Missouri Repertory Theatre.
Jerome Lawrence wrote of his playwriting partnership with Lee:
"Robert E. Lee and I have been called by various critics: 'the thinking man's playwrights.' In our plays and in our teaching we have attempted to be part of our times…we have hoped to mirror and illuminate the problems of the moment -- but we have attempted to grapple with universal themes."
About the Play:
Inherit the Wind dramatizes what has been known since 1925 as the Scopes “Monkey Trial.” Because of the stature and reputation of the two lawyers who participated in the trial, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, the Scopes trial was aptly dubbed the “trial-of-the-century.” The play explores what happens when a small town, high school teacher is jailed for teaching Darwin's famous book, Origin of Species, and the forces involved turn the incident a national national debate between science and religion. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found out about the new anti-evolution law in Tennessee and offered to pay for the legal defense, thereby becoming one of the catalysts for the Scopes trial. H. L. Mencken, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, was also a key figure in the trial because of the coverage and financial support his paper provided.
The play has other implications beyond the debate between science and religion. According to one source,
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee wrote Inherit the Wind as a response to the threat to intellectual freedom presented by the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era. The playwrights used the Scopes Trial, then safely a generation in the past, as a vehicle for exploring a climate of anxiety and anti-intellectualism that existed in 1950.
The play is not an historically accurate depiction of the Scopes trial. The stage directions set the place as “A small town” and the time as "Not too long ago" pointing the play’s continued relevance. Henry Drummond is loosely based on the famous lawyer, Clarence Darrow, and Matthew Harrison Brady is the dramatized version of three-time Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan. John Scopes is a relatively minor figure in the real drama at Dayton, Tennessee, but his stage alter ego, Bertram Cates, is a central figure in the play, who is arrested while teaching class, thrown into jail, burned in effigy, and tormented by many of his fellow citizens. Deemed "one of the truly great American dramas" of the 20th century, this exciting and absorbing play based on the famous Scopes trial is as relevant today as it was fifty years ago.
Inherit the Wind earned Lawrence and Lee numerous awards in the year after its production. The play won the Donaldson Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Variety New York Drama Critics Poll Award, and the Critics Award for Best Foreign Play; it was also nominated for a Tony Award. Since its publication, the play has been translated into thirty languages.
About the Cast
Actor-Character
Andy Anderson -Meeker/ Hurdy Gurdy Man
Erin Bell -Mrs. Blair/Reuter’s Man
Kelly Burke -Rachel Brown
William Denis -Henry Drummond
Patty Mintz Figel-Mrs. Brady/Mrs. McLain
Josh Hartwell-Bertram Cates/ Photographer
Michael Morgan -Hot Dog Man /Tom Davenport
Paul Page-Rev. Jeremiah Brown/Dunlap
Denise Perry-Olson -Mrs. Krebs/Reporter/Eskimo Pie Man
Max Posner-Howard/Timmy
Theresa Reid -Melinda/Mrs. Loomis/Harry Y. Esterbrook
T. Adam Romsdahl-Sillers
John Samson -Bollinger/ Mayor
Louis Schaefer -Matthew Harrison Brady
Matt Sheahan -E.K. Hornbeck
Shawn Syre -Elijah/Mr. Bannister
Jim Zeiger-Mr. Goodfellow/Judge
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and so on...
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut PVII excelsior magna aliquam erat very cool. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci.