Produced around the country under the American Playwrights Theatre program, this drama’s message of civil disobedience resonates today. The play, by Robert Edwin Lee and Jerome Lawrence, opens with Henry David Thoreau in jail for refusing to pay taxes. He objects to supporting a government that is conducting a war of aggression in Mexico. Thoreau is philosophical, funny and defiant in this play. His friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, visits him in jail, where the Harvard-educated Thoreau befriends his cellmate. Scenes portray his return from college, where he idolized Emerson, his attempt to establish a transcendentalist school, his career as a handyman and tutor in Emerson’s household and his romance. The play has its laugh-out-loud moments despite Thoreau’s serious dilemma. You’ll find out how Thoreau gets out of jail, but only after a night when he experiences a grotesque dream in which the characters take up guises in a mortal assault on Mexico.

The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail is produced by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.