GRANTHAM, Pa. (March 29, 2007) — Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s acclaimed play “Inherit the Wind” will show at Messiah College from April 19–21 and 26–28 at 8 p.m., with 2 p.m. matinees on April 22 and 29. Guest-directed by Kristopher Yoder and based loosely on the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, “Inherit the Wind” features a small midwest town thrown into uproar when a high school teacher teaches evolutionary ideas out of a textbook. His subsequent trial brings two prominent lawyers on opposite sides of the debate into heated confrontation, presenting the audience with the play’s themes of religious belief and freedom of thought that have made it a classic since its Broadway premiere in 1955. “Inherit the Wind” will be performed in Miller Auditorium, located in the Climenhaga Fine Arts Center on the college’s Grantham campus. Admission is $10; $5 for students and adults ages 55+.  Tickets may be purchased by calling the Messiah College ticket office at (717) 691-6036.

On April 21, from 1–5 p.m., a four-panel symposium sponsored by the Central Pennsylvania Forum for Science and Religion will be held in Miller Auditorium for discussion surrounding the play and the questions it raises. The panelists include Ted Davis, a professor of the history of science at Messiah College; Yoder, the play’s director; Walter Bilderback of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia; and Carol Iannone, freelance writer and editor of “Academic Questions.”  The symposium is free and open to the public, and audience members are encouraged to attend in order to complete their experience of the play. For further information on the symposium, its speakers, or the forum’s other related events, visit the forum’s website at www.messiah.edu/godandscience/.

About the play

 “This play is just as relevant today as it was 50 years ago,” Yoder, the play’s director, states. “It has never been about evolution versus creationism. It’s about what happens when God is taken out of the equation.” Yoder’s perspective promises to bring a new emphasis to a play that has often been seen as strictly about the creation versus evolution debate.

The original trial, admittedly different from its portrayal in “Inherit the Wind,” was certainly concerned with such matters. Its fictional counterpart gave it lasting fame, although somewhat of a distorted nature. Lawrence and Lee took the play’s title from Proverbs 11:29, which promises that those who trouble their own house will “inherit the wind.” The characters in the play bear slight resemblance to the characters of history, an artistic liberty which Lawrence and Lee exercised as a way of drawing out the potential themes and questions of the historical event that then arise with greater clarity from their constructed version.

Audience members are encouraged to pay attention to the play’s portrayal of its various characters, bringing their observations to the table as they participate in the Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science events surrounding the performance.

About the symposium

In some ways, “Inherit the Wind” serves merely as a springboard for the symposium sponsored by the Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science. With a strong belief in the relevancy of the play’s themes to today’s world, the forum requested that Messiah College’s theatre department put on a production of Lawrence and Lee’s masterpiece. In addition to the symposium, the forum sponsored public screenings of three films connected to the continuing debate surrounding evolution and public education. 

The symposium on April 21 will address such issues as the discrepancy between “Inherit the Wind” and the historical Scopes Trial, the challenges involved in production and various thematic elements raised by the play’s content. The symposium will also include a talk-back session for those who attend. Davis will be its first speaker at 1 p.m., followed by Yoder at 2 p.m. and a brief intermission at 2:30 p.m. Bilderback will reconvene the talk at 2:50 p.m., after which Iannone will speak. The talk-back session will then go from 4:10–5 p.m.

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