Event

Inherit The Wind - Grand Arts

Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee as inspired by the 1925 "Monkey Trial," in which Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in violation of state law. Scopes deliberately courted arrest to challenge what he and his supporters saw as an unjust law, and the trial became a national cause when the Baltimore Sun, represented by the famed journalist H. L. Mencken, hired attorney Clarence Darrow to defend Scopes. The prosecuting attorney was crusading politician William Jennings Bryan, once a serious contender for the Presidency. While Bryan won the case as expected, he and his supporters were held up to public ridicule by the cagey Darrow. In the play, the names and places were changed, but the basic chronology was retained, along with most of the original court transcripts. John Scopes becomes Bertram Cates; Clarence Darrow is Henry Drummond; William Jennings Bryan is Matthew Harrison Brady; and H. L. Mencken is E. K. Hornbeck. Dayton, Tennessee is transformed into Hillsboro -- or, as the relentlessly cynical Hornbeck characterizes it, "Heavenly Hillsboro."