Seattle Joins the Rest of the Nation with ESP's Public Reading of It Can't Happen Here

Poster from the original production.

Why are you so afraid of the word "Fascism," Doremus? Just a word--just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours - Sinclair Lewis

Seventy-five years after Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis' novel, It Can't Happen Here was adapted to stage and performed all over the country by various arms of the Federal Theater Project, the fictional America of the novel strongly resembles the fictional America of today: populated with demagogues, yes-men and a cynical yet oddly demure public willing to be led in whatever direction the loudest speaker will lead them.

The stated aim of Seattle's Endangered Species Project is to give audiences a chance to "hear the plays you seldom see." Tomorrow night they join twenty-two other groups around the country in performing a staged reading of the esteemed Sinclair Lewis play. That's better than the original Federal Theater Project managed: there were eighteen cities participating in the original production, Seattle among them as well (with an African American cast, too!).

The plot of the play deals rise of a conservative senator to the Presidency of the U.S. through nefarious means, becoming a vicious dictator murdering his way to the top. ESP's guest director, Arne Zaslove, notes that there are parallels to the rise of Hitler three years earlier in Germany. While this is true, an even more obvious parallel is with the career and persona of Louisiana's own "Kingfish," Sen. Huey P. Long and his uniquely left-wing demagoguery that has so cleverly been appropriated by today's right-wing politicians.

The cast looks extra-special, even for an ESP reading and certainly this is one of the more intense scripts they have chosen. And it's free, so why not?

October 24th @ 7 pm // MOHAI, 2700 24th Ave E // Admission is free, but donate something to these marvelous people