When directing the work in the centenary of the trial, Buck says he is working towards the same mission as Dayton’s leaders had a century ago.
“I am accumulating the buzz over this city, preparing people here to excite them, putting Dayton on the map,” Buck said. “Maybe we are trying to use this story and this test to get a little attention to this specific place.”
The descendant
Jacob Smith, 23, did not realize his connection with the most famous test until he began studying the story. His great -grandmother was Walter White, the County School Superintendent and one of the key figures that led to Dayton.
Smith plays Dudley Field Malone, a Scopes defense lawyer who gave speeches as equally passionate and memorable during the trial such as Bryan and Darrow. One of Smith’s favorite lines to deliver is a reference to the so -called battle between the two parts of the Court.
“Basically he says: ‘There is never a duel with the truth,” said Smith. “He said: ‘He always wins. He is not a coward. He doesn’t need the law, government forces or’ and stops, ‘Mr. Bryan’.”
Smith is currently the county archivist, and delights in seeing people visit Dayton’s original palace with their bright and bright wooden floors, high windows and impressive stairs that lead to the wide room of audiences on the second floor.
“You can keep the handrails that go up to that Circuit Court Chamber, as those lawyers would have done and all those spectators would have done it in 1925,” Smith said.
THE ‘GREAT PERBEY’
Larry Jones has acted in the community and local theater since childhood, so he thought he knew the history of the Scopes test after acting in a “Hereding the Wind” production.
He later realized that the famous work was taking creative freedoms to make trial a metaphor of something else that captivate the attention of the nation at that time: the McCarthyism.
Jones plays the role of Bryan, a famous Christian speaker and populist politician whose speeches earned him the nickname of “The Great Commoner”. He says that the most difficult part was not to learn the long speeches that Bryan gives during the trial, but the fight he must do when Darrow unexpectedly puts Bryan in the position to defend the literal truth of the Bible.
“I just have to answer spontaneously, and feel spontaneous every time,” said Jones. “So, part of my mind goes: ‘Oh, my God, is that the right sign? Will I say the right thing?”
Jones said the public still connects to the test count a century later because these are problems that continue to deal.
“People still discuss the same case,” Jones said. “What is the role of the federal government or the state government in public school systems? What should be allowed? What should not afford? What can parents exercise influence for the good of their children? Either evolution or if it is literature or any of the political problems that abound today, it is still the same argument.”
Without conclusion
The result of the trial was not a big surprise. The jury found the guilty scope after a few minutes of deliberation. However, the objective of defense lawyers was all the legal argument to a superior court.
Today, Dayton embraces his place in history with the annual celebration of the trial. Companies announce and promote the “monkey trial.” And the locals have adopted the phrase: “Dayton has evolved.”
“We are dusting a very old story, but it’s very new,” Buck said. “It’s very, very right now.”
