'People of the State': A dramatic reconstruction of the John T. Scopes trial

In July of 1925 Professor John Thomas Scopes, a science teacher at Central High School in Dayton, Tennessee, was taken to court for violating the Butler Act. In March of that same year, State Assemblyman John Washington Butler had introduced a bill into the Tennessee State Legislature which prohibited the teaching of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The bill made it unlawful for a teacher in a publicly-supported school to profess any theory of man's origin other than the story of divine creation told in the Bible. A typical fundamentalist, Butler was motivated by a desire to protect the traditional notions and teachings of the Bible against what he perceived to be the agnosticism of modern science.;My aim was to translate this famous and important trial into the form of a play, People of the State, using Heinar Kipphardt's In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Eric Bentley's Are You Now or Have You Ever Been as models.;A directorial concept was arrived at through the examination of the examples of epic theatre practitioners Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht. Non-literary sources, such as slide photographs of the 1925 trial and folk and religious music typical of the time in Tennessee, help to create the setting and enhance the atmosphere of the play.;Chapter I is a brief overview of the historical background of the trial and the famous figures involved. Chapter II is an essay which briefly discusses the evolution of the documentary drama, chiefly from its roots in the epic theatre style of production of Piscator to the modern tribunal plays of Bentley and Kipphardt. Chapter III is an analysis of People of the State, including sources, resources, and influences, as well as a discussion of the arrangement of the historical materials. Chapter IV contains the text and stage directions for the play. Appendix A is an addendum which discusses the 1986 workshop production of People of the State at St. Clement's Church in New York City. Appendix B contains a selection of the original trial transcript from the Scopes case. Appendix C contains a selection of photostatic reprints of slides used in the 1986 production. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.).