Greenbrier Valley Theatre presents the drama The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail"

Greenbrier Valley Theatre presents the drama "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail"

Greenbrier Valley Theatre presents the drama The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, by Jerome Lawrence & Robert Edwin Lee. 

As the title suggests, the premise of the play is to dramatize a single night spent in a Concord, Mass. jail by the writer/philosopher/teacher/poet Henry David Thoreau.   In 1846, Thoreau was arrested after refusing to pay his taxes in protest of the Mexican-American War—a conflict he viewed as entirely unjust.  However, the drama also details in flashback scenes featuring many of the events, people and experiences in Thoreau’s life which led him to that fateful night in jail, and which helped shape him into the man he would become afterward.

Thoreau was a student at Harvard and a writer of the Transcendentalist movement—which began in the 1820s and was primarily based in the Boston area.  The Transcendentalists were a generation of writers and intellectuals who sought to create a uniquely American body of literature, as well as to try and establish a reevaluation of religious thinking.  They viewed themselves to be in rebellion against the Calvinist and Unitarian views of the previous generation, as taught at the Harvard School of Divinity.

“They were genuine American thinkers, but they used the best of what they learned from the Europeans and the Romantic poets and they developed their own school of thought,” says GVT Creative Director Cathey Sawyer, who is directing the play.  She says the Transcendentalists greatly admired Eastern philosophy and were willing to compare their own Western views against those of the East, taking the best ideas from both.  They were heavily involved in social reform—most being staunch abolitionists.  They became activists, non-conformists, believers in civil-disobedience as a form of protest against injustice, and were some of the earliest champions for the rights of women. 

The play also details the sometimes rocky relationship between Thoreau and his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, a major writer and lecturer of the day whose influence on Thoreau shaped his early life.  Thoreau believed he had learned more from Emerson’s speeches than he had during his entire time at Harvard.  This and other experiences led him to become a teacher himself—a great strength of the Transcendentalists.

“They had a huge impact on education,” Sawyer says.  “Their ideals of education—although some of their schools failed—there are still Montessori schools that are based on Transcendentalist ideas.”

Thoreau is also considered the father of environmentalist writing.  He is best known for his 1854 book Walden; or Life in the Woods, in which he chronicles the two years, two months and two days he spent in a cabin on the shores of Walden Pond, on land owned by his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Thoreau held a steadfast belief that humanity should live in harmony with nature.  When the play opens, Thoreau is in the final days of his life at Walden.  The story supposes that Thoreau’s night in jail was a pivotal one in his life, shifting his outlook on his place in the world, leading to the more activist role he would take afterward. 

Sawyer says that this play was chosen for GVT because despite its 1846 setting, it remains timeless and relevant to our time.  Lawrence and Lee originally wrote the play in the 1970s as a commentary on Vietnam.  However, it continues to resonate with all conflicts since. 

“His act of civil disobedience is a positive example of how to change the world,” Sawyer says.  “His protest was against an unnecessary war—and we’re a country that’s been at war for 12 years now.”

The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail will be GVT’s educational outreach play for 2013, performed in weekday matinees for students from schools as close as Greenbrier County to as far as Charleston.  This year GVT will perform for seven schools.  The schools are also provided with a study guide developed by GVT to assist with introducing Thoreau and related concepts to the students.  Sawyer will also give a presentation on these themes before each matinee and public performance. 

Public performances of The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail will run September 27-28, October 4-5, and October 11-12, 2013 at 7:30 p.m, and September 28, 2013 at 2:00 p.m.  For tickets or more information, call the GVT Box Office at 304-645-3838.

My husband and I enjoyed an evening at the theatre Saturday night to see the engaging and powerful play, The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, that chronicles Henry David Thoreau’s famous act of civil disobedience.  Here, we learn what motivates and inspires this fiercely independent writer, known as the founding father of the environmental movement and a voice of transcendentalism.