Company of Fools to read ‘The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail’
BY DANA DUGAN
In his masterpiece, “Walden,” Henry David Thoreau wrote about the eponymous pond he visited on his daily nature walks. He wrote, “There have been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly had no foundation for themselves. It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.”
Thoreau was an interesting fellow. He famously spent two years in a small, isolated cabin, focusing on the spiritual rewards of a life lived in harmony with nature. The cabin was located in the Walden Woods, near Concord, Mass., on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson. A fellow writer, Emerson was a leader in the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century, of which Thoreau was also an adherent. Wondering about the bottomlessness of a pond, as a metaphor for humans’ ability to think and worship as individuals while simplifying one’s life, was right up Thoreau’s woodsy alley.
At 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23, at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey, Company of Fools will present a free rehearsed reading of “The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail” by Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence. The prolific playwriting duo is best known for the dramas “Inherit The Wind” and “First Monday in October.”
The play will be directed by COF veteran David Janeski. The cast includes actors Andrew Alburger, Kagan Albright (Thoreau), Chris Carwithen, Scott Henderson, John Mauldin, Melodie Taylor Mauldin and Ward Loving. The actors, other than Albright, will play multiple roles of fellow transcendentalists who visit Thoreau while he’s in jail.
The play is perfectly paired with The Center’s new exhibition, The Bottomlessness of a Pond: Transcendentalism, Nature and Spirit.
“At this technology-saturated moment, when creating time to pause, breathe, and just be in awe of the world is increasingly difficult, it seems appropriate to look again at the approach of the transcendentalists, who advocated a retreat from the material world in favor of a divine encounter with nature,” said Kristin Poole, Sun Valley Center’s artistic director. “Re-examining their ideas may encourage us to take that pause—to stop and look and perhaps, along the way, find that a deep breath on a crisp Idaho day fills more than just our lungs.”
The play is provocative, timely, and still feels relevant even though it was written in 1969, said Scott Palmer, COF artistic director.
“‘The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail’ explores Thoreau’s civil disobedience in the face of the Mexican-American War and his protest of the Fugitive Slave Laws,” Palmer said. “It’s smart, very interesting, and nonlinear.”
Thoreau’s experience later provided the basis for his essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” and serves as the inspiration for the playwrights’ fictionalized account of that evening and the events leading up to it.
“Lawrence and Lee made the argument that we still have a lot to learn from Thoreau,” Palmer said. “They were directly relating to his humanism in connecting it to the war in Vietnam, social injustice and the revival of transcendentalism. More recently, the play connects the concepts to current political movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo.”
Although admission to the staged reading of “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail” is free, a $10 donation is encouraged and reservations are recommended. To reserve seats for the reading and for more information about upcoming events associated with The Center’s upcoming BIG IDEA project, visit sunvalleycenter.org or call (208) 726-9491.
