The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial

The Scopes Trial, over the right to teach evolution in public schools, reaffirmed the importance of intellectual freedom as codified in the Bill of Rights. The trial, in a small-town Tennessee courtroom in 1925, set the stage for ongoing debates over the separation of Church and State in a democratic society – debates that continue to this day. Peter Goodchild used transcripts from the trial to create this intense docudrama.

An L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance featuring:

Edward Asner as William Jennings Bryan
Bill Brochtrup as Ensemble
Kyle Colerider-Krugh as Ensemble
Matthew Patrick Davis as John Thomas Scopes
John de Lancie as Clarence Darrow
James Gleason as H.L. Mencken
Harry Groener as Dudley Field Malone
Jerry Hardin as Judge John Raulston
Geoffrey Lower as Attorney General Stewart
Marnie Mosiman as the Narrator
Kenneth Alan Williams as Arthur Garfield Hays

Directed by Brendon Fox. Recorded in Cambridge, Massachusetts before a live audience at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University in April of 2007.

is part of L.A. Theatre Works’ Relativity Series featuring science-themed plays. Major funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, bridging science and the arts in the modern world.