Scopes ‘monkey’ trial going on tour

Eighty years ago this month, a Tennessee courtroom erupted in a furious battle over the teaching of evolution in schools. As legal titans William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow clashed in the landmark Scopes “monkey” trial, the country tuned in to listen -- a first, thanks to the youthful medium of radio.

To commemorate that event, L.A. Theatre Works will re-create the 1925 “trial of the century” radio experience for a 22-city, live radio theater tour of British playwright Peter Goodchild’s docudrama “The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial,” based on the trial transcripts.

The national tour is a first for the 31-year-old company, which primarily produces live performances of contemporary and classical plays locally for later broadcast over satellite and National Public Radio.

The decision to remount Goodchild’s play, part of L.A. Theatre Works’ extensive audio library, was made two years ago and turned out to be a “serendipitous” choice, says Susan Loewenberg, the company’s producing director.

In light of the recent controversies over creationism, “intelligent design” and evolution, she hopes to make the show “part of a national conversation” and is working with the Washington-based, bipartisan Constitution Project to offer post-show panel discussions on related topics: how the media have covered the evolution/creationism issue since 1925; the separation of church and state; how evolution is being taught, or not, in schools.

In addition, local National Public Radio stations will be permitted to record individual performances and discussions for one-time broadcast to their communities.

“I’m sure that there will be some who come who will be skeptical,” Loewenberg says. “But hopefully it will be a way for people to think about it in a productive way. You’re not going to convince a scientist that God created the Earth, and you’re not going to convince somebody who is absolutely convinced that he did that the theory of evolution is really where it’s at -- so you have to figure out a way to have the conversation where people can talk about it in a rational way.”

The tour will begin in October at Humboldt State University in Northern California and end in February at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. It will feature a core cast plus a rotating roster of well-known actors in the principal roles of Bryan, Darrow and the Narrator. Among the participants will be James Cromwell, Marsha Mason, Stacy Keach, Eric Stoltz, Sharon Gless, Alfred Molina and Edward Asner, who will play Bryan for much of the tour.

-- Lynne Heffley