Scopes trial reenactment/BBQ

It was an interesting weekend…

From: Nat Friedman <nat@nat.org>
Subject: Scopes trial reenactment/BBQ.
Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2005 02:26:25 -0400

You are cordially invited to attend our

FOURTH OF JULY SCOPES TRIAL REENACTMENT AND BARBECUE!

Starring:

Joe Shaw............as William Jennings Bryan
Rony Kubat..........as Clarence Darrow

In a gripping dramatic reenactment of the famous July 1925 Scopes "monkey" trial in my living room! Watch as science is pitted against religion in a court of law! Gasp as Darrow calls Bryan to the stand! Applaud uproariously when William Jennings Bryan does body shots off some girl from Somerville after the play is over!

For whatever reason, Rony and I decided to put on a reenactment of the famous Scopes/monkey trial of July 1925. We wanted to do something more like a realistic reenactment of the actual trial rather than simply using the Inherit the Wind script. Inherit is really campy and theatric, is designed to titillate more than to inform, and is slanted substantially toward the evolutionists. We felt it would be cooler to do something more realistic.

I spent all Sunday night reading the 270-page transcript and compiling it into a script. It was an eight-day trial, so of course much of the action had to be excised. In particular, all of the debate over expert testimony was removed. The defense’s strategy was to use the media circus surrounding the trial as a vehicle for educating the American public about biology and science. So they wanted to call a different expert witness to the stand every day and have the papers report a new set of interesting scientific findings. Zoologists, geologists, biologists, etc.

Over three days of objections, the prosecution managed to squash any hopes the defense had, and the judge struck from the record what little testimony they had managed to get. (They did end up convincing many journalists to republish written statements by the various experts, which were also submitted into the record, but not shown to the jury.) Also culled from the script was the bit where Darrow is held in contempt of court.

Other than that, however, I think we managed to hit the high points and tell the story pretty well. What people forget about Scopes, eighty-years later, when all we have to go on are the movies, is that the evolutionists lost the trial. And in fact, the trial was a setup from the beginning. Judge Haulston ordered the jury to rule only on whether or not the law had been violated, and not to question the validity of the law. He speaks extensively during the trial on the separation of powers in the US government.William Jennings Bryan gets the best lines, in my opinion.

The script is, in the end, mainly a cut-and-paste of the various parts of the transcript (which is in the public domain). This is harder than it sounds. And of course I did have to write some lines myself, to make it flow. And yes, to spice it up a little bit here or there (Bryan never actually says “October 23rd, at 9am” in the trial). But overall it’s a lot more documentary than Inherit the Wind. Whether it has any value for anyone else is highly questionable though .

The script is available here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

The cast and crew for our performance last night were as follows:

Joe Shaw........ as William Jennings Bryan
Rony Kubat...... as Clarence Darrow
Taylor Hayward.. as Judge Haulston
Peter Teichman.. as Atty-Gen Stewart
Robert Love..... as John T. Scopes
Me.............. as Narrator/Reverend
Emil Sit........ as the Bailiff

Everyone was, of course, amazing. I mean, for computer programmers. Joe Shaw especially, as the silver-tongued politician. Rony’s performance was spot on. And Peter Teichman has a wicked southern accent. Gentle and melodious. Peter and Lizzie also made a superb replica of the original “READ YOUR BIBLE” sign that hung over the jury for a portion of the actual trial.

Here are a few of my photos of the evening.

Also, of course, there were fireworks.