"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
"The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us."
"Okay. Let's begin."
So we crawled, wormlike, out of our miniscule, muck-encrusted molecular cradles and, over hundreds of millions of years, advanced to the exalted level of contemporary human consciousness ... Howard Stern on satellite radio.
Evolution come full circle?
Chuckie Darwin's pithy Origin of Species theory that pitted those dastardly "evilutionists" against the Lord's hordes so long ago hardly seems worth the argument now. Yet the argument itself has evolved: Where Darwin's detractors once cloaked themselves in classic creationism, they're now outfitted in the more conciliatory—but still dogmatic—"intelligent design."
Which is why what's unfolding in Rehearsal Hall 206 at the Ham Fine Arts Building—a play about an 80-year-old fuss—is as fresh as tomorrow. And, given an X-factor at its core, it's as poised for theatrical triumph this weekend as it is for dramatic disappointment, because art can be as much of a cosmic crapshoot as biology.
That stray strand of DNA is a first-time UNLV director who, on the cusp of opening weekend, has some members of the university's theater arts staff fretting over the show's outcome, says a source close to the program.
Can a director with a hands-off approach who's setting nearly Olympian records for the pace of rehearsals also deliver a creatively rich, deeply explored play? Or is this an overreaction to a director who deviates from the universal playbook?
But this is a story about the evolution of a production about evolution, of how a play emerges from the creative primordial soup, sprouts limbs and learns to walk upright toward opening night. So in the Darwinian spirit, let's run it from the top.
Reporter E.K. Hornbeck to lawyer Henry Drummond:
"Hello, devil. Welcome to hell."
Wait ... Wasn't he? ... Didn't he play? ... Isn't that the guy from ...?
M*A*S*H, right.
The guy who bit down on a stogie till it tilted up like a charred flagpole and oozed a bayou drawl that could seduce a rattler out of the tall grass.
"When you've been a lawyer as long as I have—a thousand years, more or less—you get so you can smell the way a jury's thinking ... uh ... what is it? ... Don't I have more lines there? When do I start talking about that f--king merry-go-round? God, if I could just LEARN this shit!"
Roof's a little snowier, tongue's a bit saltier, but yes, that's Sgt. Luther Rizzo, grease-monkey king of the 4077th motor pool. ... Grease monkey ... monkey ... man ... man from monkeys ... ah, the exquisite evolution of it all, the Darwinian natural selection of roles that advanced an actor from the automotive ape of M*A*S*H to the rip-roaringest lawyer of all-time, caught en rehearsal flagrante as G.W. Bailey struggles to learn that shit.
The process applies equally to the play. Inherit the Wind, a fictionalized account of the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, and more to the point, about the right to think independently—and speak what one thinks—was created by two playwrights who intelligently designed its dialogue and dramatic arc. It's been handed to its interpreters fully formed. And it evolves, improving and gaining complexity through every repetitious rehearsal, night after night, weekend after weekend, by the troupers of Nevada Conservatory Theatre.
Stretching from early-20th-century history to early-21st-century headlines, no play this season packs more political, scientific, social and religious relevance than what NTC will unveil this weekend.
Matthew Harrison Brady:
"The Lord began the Creation on the 23rd of October in the Year 4004 B.C. at ... uh ... 9 a.m."
Henry Drummond:
"That Eastern Standard Time? Or Rocky Mountain time? It wasn't daylight savings time because the Lord didn't make the sun until the fourth day."
His name is Robert Benedetti, Hollywood producer, director, Emmy-winner (A Lesson Before Dying, Miss Evers' Boys, you know, the HBO gold-star stuff), and new UNLV playwriting professor, in rev-up mode for his debut as an NCT helmer. You can call him Benny. Everybody does. It's even on his ball cap. He's a big, shambling guy who half-shuffles and half-rocks from side to side like a windup toy, baggy clothes breathing comfortably around his large frame, grandfatherly mien accented by a voice like a misty fog.
"I try to be a witness," he says. "I don't approach it with a predetermined interpretive conception the way many directors do. I let the energy of the show come to me, instead of being a puppet master. I try in the early stage of rehearsals to see what we've got in this combination of personalities, then edit that and move it in the direction it wants to go. One of the definitions of Zen gardening is to extend nature in the direction in which nature is already going."
That's anathema to some not-yet-pro actors who may be unaccustomed to such self-sufficiency while still learning their craft, as some discreet grumbling throughout rehearsals reveals. It sometimes seems Benny's less directing the play than choreographing it. An aggressive "ground-plan" man, he maps out a vision for nearly integrating the audience with the actors inside the Judy Bayley Theatre, transforming the auditorium into his playground.
"It's easiest to do with the courtroom interior because there would naturally be a body of spectators present in the courtroom, and by placing most of the actor-spectators on the downstage side, utilizing the orchestra pit, and blurring the line of demarcation between the actor sitting in the orchestra pit and the actual audience, there won't be any visual delineation between them, the audience kind of flows into the actors playing spectators," says Benny, who'll also extend the onstage congregation for a rousing preacher's sermon into the house.
Drummond:
"Moses never made a phone call. Suppose that makes the telephone an instrument of the devil?"
"Crusty" largely covers the character roles that come G.W. Bailey's way. Beyond his M*A*S*H stint, (1979-'83), the 60-year-old carved a memorable comic kook out of Capt. Thaddeus Harris in the original Police Academy and one-two-three-FOUR of its sequels, portrayed St. Elsewhere's Dr. Hugh Beale and, immediately following Inherit, resumes his role as Det. Lt. Provenza for the second season of TNT's The Closer.
If he fits the typecasting, it's only in modest measures. The man's a pussycat, though it isn't hard to win over a reporter when the chatty, approachable performer responds to repeated interview requests over three weeks with "anything you want," and, when told of other actors who proved difficult and self-absorbed with the media, says, "tell 'em to kiss your ass." Sure, there's a surface crust (lent extra crunchiness by a Texas twang), but not enough to qualify as rudeness and just enough to make him interesting—and unpredictable, a major actor's asset, especially as crusty, unpredictable Henry Drummond, based on legendary lawyer Clarence Darrow, who defended Scopes.
Informed he's part of an article about how a play is put together, G.W.'s right on the beat with a barb: "I'll send the story to some producers and theater owners I know so they'll learn how a show is produced."
You'll likely run across his mug more than once across the dial almost daily, even three times during a recent prime-time stretch. "What were they?" he asks. Danielle Steele's Fine Things on Lifetime, playing an attorney. "Eight cents," he quips. "Go on." The Closer. "Five cents. Go on." A M*A*S*H rerun. "Three cents. People think we all just live off our royalties. Yeah, maybe Alan Alda can live off his royalties."
Mrs. Krebs (a townswoman):
"You're a stranger, aren't you mister? Want a nice, clean place to stay?"
Hornbeck:
"I had a nice, clean place to stay, madam. And I left it to come here."
Playing Drummond's opposite number, crusading, Bible-beating prosecutor Matthew Harrison Brady—modeled after three-time failed presidential candidate, ex-secretary of state and biblical orator William Jennings Bryan—is a grown-up elf of a man with a happy-to-know-you grin that blossoms easily and often.
Veteran LA/NY actor Steve Vinovich—we'll call him Stevie V—isn't a household name, just a household face, guesting on roughly every third TV series, including Ally McBeal, Cheers, ER, Touched By an Angel, Roseanne, LA Law, Home Improvement, The Pretender and Beverly Hills 90210. "This is the first time I've seen what my hair really looks like," says the 61-year-old from Peoria, Illinois, who let his abundant mop go gray for Brady and travels far from his own personality for the role.
A guy bereft of pretense, he's draping himself in the pomposity of a man who swoons at the sound of his own speechifying. "I researched Bryan, and he really was a sad man, and something of an ignorant man," says Stevie V. "He hadn't had a lawyer job in 36 years when he did this trial."
Movie-wise, the co-stars appeared together in 1987's Mannequin. And both previously played the Judy Bayley stage, G.W. an impish delight as "the common man" in A Man for All Seasons, and Steve as tormented George, turning marriage into blood sport in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and somehow finding pathos in child-molesting Uncle Peck in How I Learned to Drive.
Rachel Brown to boyfriend/defendant Bert Cates:
"Everybody said what you did is bad. ... Why can't you be on the right side of things?"
So here are Equity headliners setting an example for a largely student cast planning on theatrical careers, making this production educationally as well as dramatically fruitful. "Most of these students are MFA candidates, and I find it no different working with them than working with professionals," Stevie V. says.
Still, why trade, even temporarily, Hollywood soundstages for campus productions? Because some juicy roles just won't land in the laps of actors if they wait for a Broadway, television or big-screen summons. The leads of Inherit the Wind are two of them. "It's about getting to say great words," G.W. says.
Brady:
"We were good friends once ... Why is it, my old friend that you have moved so far away from me?"
Drummond:
"All motion is relative. Perhaps it is you who have moved away, by standing still."
Stage manager Jennifer Barker e-mails the rehearsal schedule that will carry cast, crew and this reportorial spy from January 10's first rehearsal through February 19's final performance, bouncing from daytime to evenings to weekends:
January 10th: noon-5, Brady and Drummond; 11th: 11 a.m.-8 p.m., table reading, scenes 4,5; 12th: 10 a.m.-5 p.m., scenes 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b; 13th: 10 a.m.-5 p.m., scenes 3a, 3b; 15th: 10 a.m.-5 p.m., scenes 6, 7a, 7b. ... January 16-February 9, scenes, run-throughs, tech rehearsals, dress rehearsals, preview show, 7-11 p.m. nearly every night, afternoon practices almost every weekend ...
Are these people insane? Merely masochistic? Or truly demonic?
Hornbeck:
"My typewriter's been singing a sweet, sad song about the Hillsboro heretic, B. Cates: boy Socrates, latter-day Dreyfuss, Romeo with a biology book."
Inherit the Wind is one of the sharpest and most durable courtroom dramas ever written, inspired by the landmark case of Dayton, Tennessee, teacher John T. Scopes, accused of violating the 1925 Butler Act by discussing Darwinian theory and denying the Book of Genesis in a state-funded school (Scopes agreed to challenge the statute as a test case for the American Civil Liberties Union). Over 12 straight sweltering summer days in a Dayton courtroom, two legal lions clashed in a battle of science and Supreme Being.
In its assertive liberalism produced during Cold War paranoia, the Jerome Lawrence/Robert E. Lee play, which incorporated much of the verbal fireworks from the Scopes trial transcript, also echoed resistance to encroaching McCarthyism.
The production opened in New York in 1955 starring acting icon Paul Muni as Drummond and Ed Begley as Brady (the production also featured a young Tony Randall in one of his first roles as Hornbeck, the scribe patterned after poison-penned H.L. Mencken). George C. Scott (as Drummond) and Charles Durning returned it to Broadway in 1996, and it found a voice thrice on television, in 1956 with Melvyn Douglas and Begley, in 1988 with Jason Robards and Kirk Douglas, and in 1999 with Jack Lemmon and Scott again (shifting to the Brady role).
But the version that endures in the pop-culture consciousness is 1960's electric Stanley Kramer film, which many younger viewers no doubt haven't seen because it commits the cinematic crime of being in black and white. It starred twin screen titans Spencer Tracy as Drummond and Frederic March as Brady, colliding in career-high performances, with Gene Kelly cast brilliantly against type as Hornbeck and a pre-Bewitched Dick York as Bertram Cates, the fictionalized Scopes, in a Dayton renamed Hillsboro.
Rev. Brown:
"Do we believe in the Word! Do we believe in the truth of the Word! Do we curse the man who denies the Word! Do we cast out this sinner in our midst! Do we call down hellfire on the man who has sinned against the Word!"
Rehearsals (selected moments), January 11-15: A semicircle of actors surround Benny, cast laced with a Braves cap here, a Yankee shirt there, a hair net and curlers way over there in an ensemble that stretches from college-aged to gray and sage. With the first words out of his mouth at the initial script run-through, it's clear that Benny's folksy manner belies an unquestioned commander-in-chief quality and a fondness for brisk pacing—the actors and the play will be up on their feet before the day is over, unusual for a first script reading—but will quick equal quality?
"The audience will filter its reactions through the onlookers," he tells the performers playing the courtroom spectators. "Make your reactions audible and visual. Even shifting in your seats may be enough. But you need to have an energy that the audience can feel."
Then, a surprising announcement: Though the show is set in Tennessee, there will be no Southern accents.
"I don't want you to falsify your center, who you are," says Benny, further evidence of his "nature"-influenced, leave-the-actors-be approach. "Everyone slow down a little so the thought process that produces the words has a chance to work. Let me encourage you to look for choice points, to get inside how that character makes choices. Unless you are thinking those thoughts the character would, it will stay on the surface, it won't get inside you. Let the text get inside you."
That is one of the few instances of Benny approaching hands-on shaping of individual character parts; mostly he shifts that onus to the actors, and to the examples set by G.W. and Stevie V. Some openly embrace the freedom. Others, though unwilling to complain outright, seem caught off-guard and adrift. But the process of making art can be as impenetrable as the creation of the cosmos. Who knows if Benny's easy touch will produce a killer show? Only opening night will tell.
As for Benny's "choice points," Phil Hubbard's made his. A union actor and head of UNLV's performance programs, Hubbard portrays impassioned Rev. Jeremiah Brown, whose daughter is dating that heathen Cates, the man he despises. But his interpretation will be distinctly different than the movie version.
"He can't be wooden," says Hubbard, whose tidal wave of distinguished silver hair, though later shorn and slicked-back for the role, complements his natural gravitas. "He is a zealot, but within his zeal, there must be joy. Not smiling like a clown, but there must be exuberance. I have to avoid playing him like a villain. Claude Akins in the movie was always angry. He reminded me of a Klansman. He was unreal because he seemed possessed."
As Benny gives individual instructions, Stevie V. breaks into a soft-shoe shuffle on the scuffed, hardwood floor, but his outlook on his characterization, practiced only the previous day during a reading with G.W., isn't quite as lighthearted.
"This one hasn't come real easy," he says of Brady. "I've made a first couple of steps into it, but I've still got a lot more to find out. It felt better as I took Benny's note of slowing down. There's a lot of things going on with this guy, finding the need for approval, and all the failures he's had for so many years, just finding what fits where. Before I felt like I was just yelling."
G.W., whose entrance is yet to come, is in what will be a familiar pose: outside RH 206, alone, cell phone to ear. Though he's affable and interactive with the cast once practice begins every night, he maintains a subtle outsider's stance by making his own little entrance at rehearsals as the last guy in. Yet he never makes his castmates wait on him for a scene.
"I'm very comfortable being around this cast," G.W. says. "And now, everything is heightened a hundred percent, you just tingle. When you've read this to yourself, you've only heard it in your head. Now it won't be just words anymore, you have an image of who you're saying them to, and that helps immensely. You know, I was flying in from Vancouver to here, I had the script and I was working on it the old-fashioned way. You get a piece of paper, see their line, then you cover your line, say your line, uncover it and go down the page. Usually, I just sort of mouth it, but there was nobody sitting next to me or behind me, so I'm going, 'I object! I object!' And the flight attendant came over and asked me, 'You okay? You need some water?'"
He's also well-versed in the rhythms of rehearsing. "Like most endeavors of any kind, right now we have that initial rush, but we will hit a lull that will be numbing. NUMBING. But it's the process you have to get through because you're working on many quiet things, so my focus is not going to be on rhythm and pace and giving. My focus is, How do I arrange all this shit so I remember where and how it's going to go, and how can I make it look real and spontaneous? People start working on separate things, then they all start to come back together, and hopefully it gets exciting again."
While the rest of the cast reads from the script initially, G.W. is already laying it down, trying to commit Drummond to memory, sweeping a hand through his shock of white hair every time he drops a line, as if the gesture will literally pull the forgotten words out of his brain.
"Hey, don't come downstage of me," he says only half-jokingly as an actress crosses in front of him, "or I'll start scratchin' and fartin' and doin' all sorts of things!"
Bert Cates:
"Religion is supposed to comfort people, not frighten 'em to death!"
Rehearsals, January 16-18: "Let's take that one more time, simpler, even more contained," Benny tells Lisa Easley and Tom Sawicki, NCT student vets playing an early scene in which Easley, as Rev. Brown's daughter Rachel, sneaks over to the jail to bring boyfriend Bert some clothes. "This is a secretive meeting that's not supposed to happen. Maybe we're using too much of the stage."
Later, as Benny works the complicated staging of the townspeople gathering, Easley acknowledges the challenges of Rachel. "It's difficult when you're playing the girlfriend or someone's daughter, not to cry and be sad about everything, like 'Geez, when will this girl stop?'" says Easley, who's more intrigued by a later scene in which she confronts, evaluates—and wonders whether to trust—the sarcastic Hornbeck. "It shows a little bit more of her spunk. We're going to craft that scene a little bit more tomorrow. She's not a little pushover in it."
But her costar in that exchange is struggling to find a tone that fits him. "The scene with Rachel is one of the tough scenes for me," says NCT'er Stephen Crandall, wrestling with the role of Hornbeck. "He's trying to get under her skin, squeeze his way in to gain her trust and get inside information. It's his language, the words he uses. It's hard to find ways to justify that type of alliteration. He almost speaks in pictures, and I find it tough. It resembles a verse language, and it's hard to find the flow and rhythm. I wasn't quite prepared for that scene today."
Taking a break from the townspeople scene, Hubbard reflects on his responsibility to fuel the actions of everyone gathering to welcome the arriving Brady at the train depot. "There's a laid-back aspect to these folks from the South, but Rev. Brown is more nervous because he's setting up the greeting. That drives the pace at which I move, which affects where people are at particular points on the stage. If I move slower, I might not make it in time to merge with them. So it's technical and about character and blocking, they all link together."
Stevie V, awaiting his entrance as Brady with wife, Sarah (Joan Mullaney), at his side, considers the Hillsboro citizens much more than a background chorus of characters. "The crowd is really the third lead in this, Drummond, Brady and the town," he says. "I'm fighting for them, for their opinion and approval, and the minute I lose them, I fall apart, I die. I don't want anybody to think, 'Oh, I'm just in the chorus.' I ride on everything they give me."
Finally, Benny's done positioning the citizens of Hillsboro, stage left, stage right, upstage, downstage, but one quick bit of business requires a rather obvious correction, as he directs the little girl who first spots Drummond departing from the train.
Benny: "And ... lighting change ..."
Jennifer the stage manager: "Train whistle ..."
Girl: "It's the devil! It's the devil!"
Benny: "Wait, wait, you've got to see the devil first! ... And maybe it's better if you don't run toward the devil."
A repeat run, then they're done. It's the first of several times Benny will cut rehearsals short by as much as two hours—after whole scenes are almost jogged through nonstop, with a 10-minute break, or the entire play is run once—or cancelled entirely. More play time, less "play" time. Will it bring a payoff or exact a price on the production?
Drummond:
"What's the biblical evaluation of sex?"
Brady:
"It is considered original sin."
Drummond:
"And all these holy people got themselves 'begat' through original sin? All this sinning make them any less holy?"
Rehearsals, January 19-24: Rote. The Act I run-through is on the beat but punch-less. Okay. Get it down, then give it oomph. G.W.'s even conquered a courtroom speech that's bedeviled him, barreling through it without a slipped syllable. "I have to just let go now," he says during a break. "I have to start touching my body. It has to be me. I can start playing with it. The audience has to believe that's who this guy is."
They've got to believe that the actors surrounding him believe it too, as a rehearsal was pulled up short by this exchange:
G.W.: "I don't wanna have what they call an 'eggy moment'—they'll be frying f--king omelets on my face if there's no crowd hubbub there."
Actors have their own creative colloquialisms for embarrassing situations, in this instance, abandonment by fellow actors during a crucial moment.
Benny: "Jury, your hubbub when Drummond threatens to storm out of the courtroom does need to be louder. A couple of you can even stand during that. And we need more of a group reaction from you spectators. And you reporters, you're going crazy because this would be a huge story for Clarence Darrow to walk out on a case."
G.W.: "If there's not a reaction to the fact that I'm walking out, I've got squat."
But Act II's largely a reversal: passion creeps in but the dialogue's coming more haltingly, sometimes not at all. "If we're skipping whole parts, you've got to let us know," G.W. tells stage manager Jennifer, who feeds the actors line prompts. Easley's Rachel, meanwhile, has broken down in heaving sobs on the stand after Brady's cross, led away and out of RH206 by Hubbard as her reverend dad. Outside, they're giggling together. "I know some actors carry it around," Hubbard says. "But we can be bawling and once we walk offstage, that's it, we can be telling a joke. It's imaginary emotions. It's fun and wonderful and real and truthful, but still ..."
Of course, tension relievers take other, bawdier forms.
Benny: "Okay, Rachel, you run into Bert's arms for consolation, and Bert, you take her upstage for some private moments."
G.W.: "I don't wanna see any fornicating back there."
Sawicki: "Hey, I HAVE been in prison for awhile."
Stevie V is beginning to channel Brady's self-important physicality as he takes the stand himself to be cross-examined by Drummond in the courtroom climax, lips pursed, chest protruding, rooster-like. "It's starting to jell a little, I think, I'm finding a little more in him," he says. "Things are happening with the character on their own, without having to bludgeon them to death. And I'm basing my walk a little on Benny's, because he's a big man."
He's vowed not to watch Frederic March's portrayal in the film to avoid even unconsciously aping it, he says during a break. But at home one night, he came across the movie and stayed with it to see the portion where Brady, after collapsing, is carried off, mumbling an undelivered inauguration speech about his plans for the presidency he was never elected to. "I thought, 'Oh good, I'm having trouble with that business, maybe March can show me what to do.' And of course, the movie cut that scene."
NCT'er Taylor Hanes, however, has shifted his court judge from a generic jurist to an interpretation closer to the Dixie-fied gavel-banger of the actual trial—Judge John Raulston.
"Benny told me, 'I want you to assume some qualities of maybe a bumbler, a Southern kind of old-time mountain judge,' just go for it. He wants me to lock in the character just like this." More colorful, certainly, but perhaps also counterintuitive to the accent-less readings Benny prescribed for the rest of the cast.
Meanwhile, Benny has some cast notes: "We're going to use basic street makeup, feature-heightening. I don't want a lot of makeup makeup, okay? Who's in charge of pivoting the courthouse during the scene shift? When you guys go off with Brady, please peel off right there. ... Now, I'm worried about the hats throwing shadows over your eyes. Be careful to wear the front brims as far back as you can. ... Okay, we'll need one more chorus of 'Gimme That Ol' Time Religion' on the exit in order to get everybody offstage with the effect of fading out."
Bert Cates:
"Man wasn't just stuck here like a geranium in a flower pot."
What will occupy the stage begins in the mind of UNLV visiting technical director Travis Coyne, this show's set designer, replacing Jeff Fiala, who left the production after "an artistic difference of opinion" with Benny. But Coyne's creation, aided by a shop supervisor, master carpenter, four grad students and four undergrads, takes inspiration from both visions.
"We wanted to place this show in a black void, so it's kind of floating in space," he says of a work whose theme—the often acrimonious division between religion and science—is timeless. "Because the major theme is between Darwinism and creationism, Jeff Fiala found these windows for the courthouse shaped like a giant cross. They're going to resemble a window, but when they're lit well, it really makes the crosses pronounced," Coyne says.
"There are two scenes, an outdoor scene, and the interior of the courtroom. Instead of doing a standard box set on which we could really be detailed, it will be suggestive. The three window units will give the suggestion that there are walls there. The center unit will pivot around, and that's also the exterior of the courthouse. The other units, the judge's bench and the reporters' bench, will move offstage so during the exterior scenes, it'll be just the courthouse exterior, a couple of lampposts, a park bench, very suggestive."
Costume requirements? Period: 1920s. "We're on a limited budget, and some of the clothing around town is limited and expensive, so we've borrowed costumes from the Utah Shakespeare Festival," says costume designer Reyna Martinez. "We can also take some of the pieces of suits we have and try to make them look a little more period, just changing the lapels, or the position of the buttons. People who work in the costume shop do the sewing. The shop manager and I go out and do the buying."
A larger challenge falls to lighting designer Hannah Boigon. "So much of the time of day changes over the course of the play, but we couldn't figure out a way to get the shadows to move across the floor that was within our budget and realistic-looking, so we had to cut the effect, and we're doing the light through the windows now," Boigon says.
"You won't be able to see it on the floor as much, but you can see how the shadows would look different at 9 a.m. than at 3 o'clock. One of the main themes of the show is, what happens if you don't move forward? So watching the movement of time is crucial. It's been an interesting exercise."
Brady:
"Describe to the court your innermost feelings when Bertram Cates said to you, 'God did not create man, man created God!'"
Rachel Brown:
"No! What he said was, 'God created man in His own image, and man, being a gentleman, returned the compliment!'"
Rehearsal, January 25: It's nothing, really. The mechanics of a small moment. But it's everything, actually. Do it right and the play's spell is unbroken, the audience in its thrall through the final fadeout. Do it wrong and they slip out of your hands, hearts and minds landing like shattered glass, and you've fumbled the silent, pivotal, ironic richness of the finale.
The scene: Trial is over. Drummond stands with Cates at the defense table when Rachel enters stage left, toting Darwin's Origin of Species, discussing its controversial passages as she passes Drummond to join Cates, who has moved farther stage right. The couple must exit for the train depot stage left, setting up Drummond's moment of noticing the book accidentally left behind, calling after them to no avail, crossing the stage to retrieve the Holy Bible on the witness stand, and performing the play's last bit of business.
Problem: With Bert and Rachel fairly stage right of Drummond while holding the book, there's no way to leave it on the defense table without it looking deliberate on their exit stage left.
"You know, I could leave it on the witness stand," Easley says.
"Yeah, you could," Benny answers.
"You've got to find a way to get it here because that's the whole point of that beat," G.W. says. "Because I call after them, 'You forgot (this)!' I can't look around, it's gotta be right here."
"You know there's a simple solution. Go ahead, say your lines," Benny says, as he takes the book, mimics her entrance and, instead of doing a walk-and-talk with the book past Drummond, drops it on the defense table as the dialogue continues, placing Darwin in position for the last scene. The cast applauds the simplicity of the solution.
Picking up after an interim scene, G.W.'s Drummond calls after the couple, picks up the forgotten Origin of Species, crosses over to the witness stand to fetch the Bible, weighs them in each hand, evaluating them, and, in the symbolic crescendo of Inherit the Wind, pushes them together and carries them side by side into the darkened wings.
On the way out, he flips the bird, cast dissolving in laughter.
Drummond:
"The Bible is a book. It's a good book. But it's not the only book."
Rehearsal, January 26-30: They're hurtling now, headed for the Judy Bayley stage a full week early, shortened rehearsals and all. "We get the space for two weeks, and that's highly unusual," Hanes says. "That makes a difference in terms of preparation, and an adjustment has to be made. I probably project here louder than I need to because of how different it is over there. I'm going to be clear upstage, and those people in the back rows will have a heck of a time if I don't project."
In anticipation of that, set designer Coyne is on hand taking notes on how the production as blocked in RH 206 will transfer to the larger space. "I'm looking for how they're using the scenery, making sure they won't be walking through walls or falling off the edges of platforms, and also looking for bits of action they've blocked that we can work into the scenery."
But Stevie V's only at half-speed, getting little sleep lately and nursing a mysterious infection on his swelling right hand and foot that medical tests have yet to explain. (Eventually, he'll be treated with steroids.)
Head slumped and resting atop the fingers of his left hand in a freeze-frame of exhaustion, he exerts obvious effort to get up and rehearse the scene where Brady collapses in the courtroom, and uncharacteristically snaps at a cast member when a movement is made too soon. After the scene's done, the exceedingly social actor even more uncharacteristically walks quickly out of the room, looking and speaking to no one.
Easley's Rachel, however, is gaining speed. "I like it a lot better, what I'm doing now," she says. "Benny's been great at getting me to slow it down, and I think it's really worked. Phil and I are working on that father-daughter relationship because it's only a couple of lines in the play, and we've added certain looks and some nonverbal heh-heh-heh's about what the actual relationship is."
And Sawicki's Bert Cates looks laid in at light speed. "He's a lot more confident in himself than I first perceived him to be," Sawicki says. "When I first approached him, I thought of him as the town pariah feeling very alienated. But then I realized that it took a lot of guts to do what he did, knowing you're going against the whole world. I'm not afraid now, throw what you got at me."
Clearly, Benny's room-to-explore philosophy is a boon to some. Oh, and he's got notes: "I want you all off-book," he says, referring to rehearsals with no peeking at the script. "If these two guys [G.W. and Stevie V] can be this far along when they've got 674 more lines than you do, you people can all be off-book by now. Also, please review your responses to the sermon the next time we do Act I. There's a well-practiced rhythm between congregation and preacher, and we need to find that."
But how beneficial is it, really, to come so far so fast? "I'm actually a little worried that we're going to be over-rehearsed by the time we open, and I may actually pull back and cancel some rehearsals," Benny says later about a decision that will set off some silent alarms.
"I think we're setting some kind of rehearsal speed records. If the costumes and sound and lights were ready, we could probably open this a week early."
Is that a cushion of comfort or an SOS that actors aren't spending enough time exploring their characters, finding the layers that make them more than dialogue regurgitators?
Drummond:
"You don't suppose this kind of thing is ever finished, do you?"
While cast and crew delve into history in Inherit, they're mindful that it also warp-speeds into the headlines.
Creationism has morphed into "intelligent design," which concedes evolutionary elements of biology but insists that some are simply too brain-defyingly complex not to have been engineered by an "intelligent designer," i.e., The Big Guy/Gal.
Essentially: God created evolution, then hit the starter button.
School boards, not unlike Dayton's so long ago, have grappled with the ID/evolution split recently. In November, the Kansas Board of Education approved new public school science standards—drafted in part by ID'ers—that question Darwinian theory, drawing fire for force-feeding creationism to students and blurring church-state separation.
In December, a federal judge ruled that Dover, Pennsylvania, school board members violated the Constitution by mandating their biology curriculum include the idea that life sprang from "an unidentified intelligent cause."
Before the ruling, after all eight Dover board members who supported the mandate were defeated for re-election, religious crusader Pat Robertson stirred resentment by proclaiming to Doverites, "If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city."
That was, unfortunately, unsurprising. Surprising, however, has been intolerance on the scientific side—call it equal opportunity loathing—claimed a Seattle Times article by Jonathan Witt headlined, "Those Defensive Darwinists."
After the New York Times published a series on Darwinism and design, Witt writes, "prominent Darwinist websites excoriated the newspaper for even covering intelligent design, insulting its proponents with terms like 'Medievalist,' 'Flat-Earther' and 'American Taliban.'"
The most disturbing incident, Witt writes, was an NPR report about evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg, ex-editor of a journal affiliated with the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. Sternberg published a paper arguing that intelligent design was the best explanation for the (geologically) sudden appearance of new animal forms 530 million years ago.
"The U.S. Office of Special Counsel reported that Sternberg's colleagues immediately went on the attack," Witt writes, "stripping Sternberg of his master key and access to research materials, spreading rumors that he wasn't really a scientist and, after determining they didn't want to make a martyr out of him by firing him, deliberately created a hostile work environment in the hope of driving him from the Smithsonian."
In a stunning inversion of the Scopes Trial mind-set of religious absolutism, when did the right to think for oneself extend only to what's provable by science? Is the new form of intolerant zealotry scientific fanaticism?
"Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes Monkey Trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous: that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious," wrote Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. "Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary: 'He believed he was doing God's work,' James Gleick wrote in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation—understanding the workings of the universe—as an attempt to understand the mind of God."
Brady:
"I am not in the least interested in the pagan hypotheses of (Darwin's) book."
Drummond:
"Then how in perdition do you have the gall to whoop up this holy war against something you don't know anything about?"
Rehearsal, January 31: The general is pleased. "I want to congratulate you on some wonderful rehearsals," Benny tells the troops. "We've done so much and have a crackerjack show here, so it's Vince Lombardi time—execution! Execution! Execution!"
Maybe. But the platoon leaders have crossed into enemy territory called stir craziness.
"NUMB—ING!" G.W. mouths to me, surrounded by the entire cast on the JBT stage on the night Benny blocks the curtain call. Grinning devilishly, he pretends to violently slap his leg to WAKE IT UP! Goofiness is settling in, and it's spreading from G.W. outward.
"Mannequin 2!" Stevie V jokes as, per theatrical protocol, he and G.W. take their joint bows last as the show's stars. "I'll bow to you first," he says. "As well you should," G.W. answers.
Benny's busy grouping cast members by size of roles—ascending from townsfolk, spectators, jurors, bailiff, reporters, judge, assistant prosecutor, Rev. Brown and Sarah Brady, Hornbeck, Bert and Rachel—and point of entrance for the curtain call, choreographed to stage left and right, depending on what side of the backstage area the actors wind up during the final scene.
"We're going to have to do this in waves," says Benny about the sizable acting ensemble. "Because of the delicacy of the last moments, you'll have to get into your positions with great quietude and grace and without being seen."
Once those moments fade to black, however, Benny throws the responsibility over to his stars. "If there's a lot of tumult, Steve and G.W. will decide whether to come back out for another bow," Benny says. "If people are really wetting their pants."
Drummond:
"That first day, was it a 24-hour day?"
Brady:
"The Bible says it was a day."
Drummond:
"There wasn't any sun, no way to tell. ... Was it a normal day, a literal, 24-hour day?"
Brady:
"I do not know."
Drummond:
"What do you think?"
Brady:
"I do not think about things that ... I do not think about."
Drummond:
"Do you ever think about things that you DO think about?"
Dress Rehearsal, February 6: The play finally looks the part, the Mayberry-like courthouse facade onstage, the cast positively bucolic in 1920s small-town garb.
"You really don't get the character till you put on these clothes," says derby-hatted Kyle Van Sun, who plays a reporter. "I looked in the mirror and thought, this is not an educated guy."
Jennifer the stage manager's got a few instructions. "Remember, no eating or drinking in costume, only water." And no smoking—it gets into the fabric.
Crandall's Hornbeck, as one of the play's outsiders, is a dapper, big-city slicker, clad in blue blazer, red pocket handkerchief and a tie pressed in place by a vest, topped by a spiffy straw hat. Hubbard, hair swept back and flattened, now pulses with the severity of his hellfire-and-damnation reverend.
Stevie V, decked out in a sober gray suit and white shirt with a stiff, high-button collar, hair shaped into a comb-over, pats his stomach padding—Brady loves to eat, a not-unimportant element of the plot—and jokes, "What's sad is, I don't think anyone will notice." G.W.'s Drummond, the "devil" lawyer from Chicago, is clad in one of the play's visual gags: pink-green-yellow suspenders.
And a unique electricity—thus far absent—courses backstage. This is gonna happen, kids.
Performances begin in a few days, and if there are doubts lurking in the shadows, the director's outlook is pure sunshine.
"The actors have been able to benefit in terms of the development of their roles from all the technical rehearsals, and I think the natural adrenaline rush that will come with having an audience Friday night will prevent any stiffness," Benny says.
"The opening of a show begins a new phase of artistic development, the input of the audience energy. I don't know if it'll be the best show I ever directed, but I think this has been the most satisfying directing experience in my life. Sometimes I felt guilty sending people home early, but I felt the work had been accomplished, and to have kept at it for the sake of time would have actually distracted us."
Second-guessing is irrelevant now.
Inherit the Wind has evolved into whatever artistic biology—or intelligent design—has made it, finally walking upright into opening night.
"He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind, and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart."
Inherit the Wind stars G.W. Bailey and Steve Vinovich will appear on The Steve Bornfeld Experience Friday at 4 p.m. on KNUU 970-AM. The show is also streamed at
knews970.com.