Scopes Trial Play

For 35 years, Dayton, TN has produced a play depicting the trial that took place in 1925 which challenged a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the public schools. It was the first trial to be labelled "The Trial of the Century." I have directed the play each summer since 2022.

Site Specific

The play is staged in the ACTUAL courtroom where the trial took place 100 years ago. Audiences are sitting in the actual seats that the people sat in for the trial.

Audience Interaction

The play has been produced for 35 years, but I added an element of audience-interaction to make it more than a history lesson. All jurors are played by audience volunteers (some with lines), and the audience is regularly cued to respond as the crowd did 100 years earlier.

Directing a cast of experts

Many of the cast members are local to Dayton and have grown up learning about and researching the case. In the latest production there were three cast members who are related to people who were at the original trial. We've come up with a system where I let them tell me the details of a scene and then they let me be the director

HOME