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[Event listing courtesy of Linda Hench]
Ten area residents have volunteered to be the readers in a production of the radio play version of Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here.
That reading, Part One of the play, will be produced Thursday, April 30, at 7 p.m. in the Sudbury Meetinghouse at First Parish Church in Sudbury. The reading is open to the public and admission is free.
Taking part in the production are Betsy Cohen, Randal Divinski, Leslie Lowe, Tom McGowan, Chris Morely, Carl Offner, Frank Riepe, Marilyn Riepe, Ravi Simon and Linda Smith. Linda Hench, who decided to stage this production and procured the script, will introduce the play and read the prologue.
Katina Fontes, owner of Athina Books, will facilitate the audience discussion after the reading. The event is co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Sudbury, First Parish of Sudbury UU, Sudbury Meetinghouse and Athina Books.
In 1935, Sinclair Lewis looked at the situation in Europe and the popularity of Louisiana politician Huey Long, and published a novel, It Can’t Happen Here, a cautionary tale on authoritarianism and the rise of fascism in America. A year later, Lewis and John Moffitt adapted the novel into a play with the same title. Since then, this reading version of the play, first created for radio, has been developed.
It Can’t Happen Here is a dystopian novel that follows the election as President of Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, a populist U.S. Senator who turns America into a fascist dictatorship. Through the eyes of Vermont newspaper editor Doremus Jessup, the story depicts the rapid dismantling of democracy, the rise of a brutal paramilitary force (the Minute Men), and the subsequent suppression of civil liberties, leading to the imprisonment of critics.