Event

Inherit the Wind

STRAWSHOP RE-IMAGINES THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY WITH INHERIT THE WIND

"If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can ban books and the newspapers. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more."--Clarence Darrow.

Most of what Americans know about the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, they learned from Inherit the Wind--either the stage play or the film--written thirty years after the case. Speaking as much to the dangers of McCarthyism as to the debate over evolution, Jerome Lawrence and R. E. Lee escalated the politics of science and religion that fuel American elections today.

Strawberry Theatre Workshop invites Seattle audiences to examine the original "Trial of the Century" again in September 2011, with a unique eight-person cast version of the play designed to focus the chaos.

Todd Jefferson Moore plays Matthew Harrison Brady, the three-time Presidential candidate and celebrity prosecutor (based on William Jennings Bryan). Reginald Andre Jackson plays Henry Drummond, the Chicago attorney (based on Darrow) summoned to Tennessee by the ACLU to make the case for intellectual freedom.

Directed by Greg Carter ("The Laramie Project"), the rest of the ensemble swirl around the courtroom as the mob-like citizens of Hillsboro, Tennessee. The agitators include Patrick Lennon, Emily Chisholm, Nick Garrison, Alycia Delmore, Evan Whitfield, and Rob Burgess.

THE COMPANY

Strawberry Theatre Workshop was the winner of the 2007 Stranger Genius Award for an Arts Organization. In 2010, Strawshop became the only theatre in Seattle nominated by Theatre Puget Sound for a Gregory Award for Outstanding Production two years in a row. This recognition was made more remarkable by the fact that Strawshop only produced a total of four plays during the two years considered--some nominated companies produced as many as twenty.