{"id":12708,"date":"2020-01-22T01:13:36","date_gmt":"2020-01-22T01:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=12708"},"modified":"2020-01-22T01:13:36","modified_gmt":"2020-01-22T01:13:36","slug":"when-a-transcendentalist-is-jailed-for-a-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2020\/01\/22\/when-a-transcendentalist-is-jailed-for-a-night\/","title":{"rendered":"When A Transcendentalist Is Jailed For A Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Company of Fools to read <\/em>\u2018The <\/em>Night Thoreau Spent in Jail\u2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

BY DANA DUGAN<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
A replica of the cabin Henry David Thoreau lived in for over two years at Walden Pond, which was the basis for his seminal collection of essays, \u201cWalden.\u201d Photo credit: Adobe Stock Image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In his masterpiece, \u201cWalden,\u201d Henry David Thoreau wrote about the eponymous pond he visited on his daily nature walks. He wrote, \u201cThere 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019 ability to think and worship as individuals while simplifying one\u2019s life, was right up Thoreau\u2019s woodsy alley.<\/p>\n

At 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23, at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey, Company of Fools will present a free rehearsed reading of \u201cThe Night Thoreau Spent In Jail\u201d by Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence. The prolific playwriting duo is best known for the dramas \u201cInherit The Wind\u201d and \u201cFirst Monday in October.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

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Scott Henderson will appear in the rehearsed staged reading at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey. Photo credit: Company of Fools<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\u2019s in jail.<\/p>\n

The play is perfectly paired with The Center\u2019s new exhibition, The Bottomlessness of a Pond: Transcendentalism, Nature and Spirit.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt 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,\u201d said Kristin Poole, Sun Valley Center\u2019s artistic director. \u201cRe-examining their ideas may encourage us to take that pause\u2014to stop and look and perhaps, along the way, find that a deep breath on a crisp Idaho day fills more than just our lungs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The play is provocative, timely, and still feels relevant even though it was written in 1969, said Scott Palmer, COF artistic director.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail\u2019 explores Thoreau\u2019s civil disobedience in the face of the Mexican-American War and his protest of the Fugitive Slave Laws,\u201d Palmer said. \u201cIt\u2019s smart, very interesting, and nonlinear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thoreau\u2019s experience later provided the basis for his essay \u201cOn the Duty of Civil Disobedience\u201d and serves as the inspiration for the playwrights\u2019 fictionalized account of that evening and the events leading up to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cLawrence and Lee made the argument that we still have a lot to learn from Thoreau,\u201d Palmer said. \u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although admission to the staged reading of \u201cThe Night Thoreau Spent in Jail\u201d 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\u2019s upcoming BIG IDEA project, visit sunvalleycenter.org or call (208) 726-9491.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Company of Fools to read \u2018The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail\u2019 BY DANA DUGAN In his masterpiece, \u201cWalden,\u201d Henry David Thoreau wrote about the eponymous pond he visited on his daily nature walks. He wrote, \u201cThere have been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly had no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12709,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,4,48,53],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calendar-2","8":"category-entertainment","9":"category-calendar","10":"category-calendar-feature"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}