Robert H. Jackson Center Reception in Banquet Room
305 E. 4th Street, Jamestown, NY 14701
Reception at 6 PM
Show at 8 PM
Douglas Scott’s exploration and celebration of the life of William O. Douglas (1898-1980). Beginning and ending on the last day of his life, the play spans his eighty-one years: as Justice on the Supreme Court where he was defender of civil liberties, personal privacy and the wilderness, as chairman of the SEC fighting a corrupt Wall Street, professor at Yale, his four marriages, his mountain climbing and globetrotting through such lands as Iran and the Himalayas, and his childhood in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. The issues are as timely as this morning's headlines.
THE STORY: The action of the play occurs within the mind of a dying man. Playing against the other two actors, who enact a multitude of memories (e.g., FDR, Nixon, Brandeis, his own parents, wives and children), Douglas struggles to find the meaning of his life. With the nation now moving in a direction antithetical to his own liberal passions, was his life meaningless? Were the sacrifices—his fight against poverty and sickness as a youth, his failures as husband and father—worth making? How does one's public life balance against the private one? The play ends with a passionate reaffirmation of the power of courage over fear, of the individual over the technological State.
$10/person for Theatre ticket. Complimentary hors d’oeuvres reception prior to performance.
