[Peace] Play "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail", Nov 8th (7pm Sat) & 9th (2:30pm Sun), Channing-Murray

[Stuart Levy]

Hey all,

The play, "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail", is named for an exercise of
civil disobedience as Henry David Thoreau refused to pay a tax to support
the Mexican-American War.   But it wanders far from there: to Ralph Waldo Emerson
remembering his friend, to Thoreau's conversation with a runaway slave ...
The stage directions say "time and space are awash here", and describe the main character:

    [...] this is *young* Thoreau -- not the bearded, weary-eyed savant
    of the postage stamp.  Our Henry is a failure, a misfit -- not a nut --
    but a painfully sane man in an insane world.  And only through unflagging
    humor can he hold onto his sanity.

Hope you are tempted by this.  It's being directed by UofI student Matthew DeMarco,
and performed by the New Revels Players, on:

    7:00pm Saturday, Nov 8th
    2:30pm Sunday, Nov 9th

both performances at Channing-Murray Foundation,
1209 W. Oregon (Oregon & Mathews), Urbana.

(This is slightly different from earlier tentative dates -- the above times are firm.)




A couple more quotes -- one from the play (written in 1970, in the midst of the
Vietnam War, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee):

    "Anytime you hear a man called 'loony,' just remember that's a great compliment
    to the man and a great disrespect to the loon.  A loon doesn't wage war, his
    government is perfect, being nonexistent.  He is the world's best fisherman and
    completely in control of his senses, thank you. 

and another from Thoreau directly, from his essay, Civil Disobedience:

    I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous
    of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and as for
    supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen
    now.  It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay
    it.  I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and
    stand aloof from it effectually.  I do not care to trace the course
    of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man or a musket to shoot
    one with — the dollar is innocent — but I am concerned to trace
    the effects of my allegiance.  In fact, I quietly declare war with
    the State, after my fashion, though I will still make what use and
    get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases.