On May 17, 1968, during the latter half of the Vietnam War, nine Catholic anti-war activists broke into the offices of the Selective Service in Catonsville, MD, removed hundreds of draft files, and took them to the street where they poured homemade napalm and set the whole lot on fire. They were subsequently arrested, tried, and convicted of destroying U.S. property and interfering with the Selective Service Act of 1967. One of the nine, Father Daniel Berrigan, dramatized the trial as The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.
From left, Cameron Dye, Andrew E. Wheeler, Adele Robbins, Chris Schultz, Scott Harris, George Ketsios, Patrti Tippo, Paige Lindsey White, Corey G. Lovett.
Originally premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in 1971, the piece finds its voice again with the Actor’s Gang, whose performances and productions are marked, as always, by excellence, passion, principle and conviction. The Gang is all about theatre that relates the history-that- was to the history currently unfolding, and the parallel between the speaking out against the injustices of Vietnam and the necessity to speak out about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is no secret. The question is: does The Trial of the Catonsville Nine bridge the divide between the cynic and the activist?
Why a Movement Failed
The cynic might point to the ineffectiveness of protests in the U.S., a disheartening reality made worse through comparisons with European and South American countries where hitting the streets in a show of anger and defiance over social injustice is an accepted and powerful practice. Despite the large numbers of anti-war protesters in the formative years of the Iraq War, however, a yawning media and a hostile political establishment in the U.S. effectively neutralized any momentum the anti-war movement could generate, a deflation catalyzed by fractures within the movement itself.
But The Trial of the Catonsville Nine offers a rejoinder in the sense that here were “ordinary” people, strongly motivated, who went beyond protests to outright civil disobedience. There’s a persuasive case to be made for the moral obligation to act against injustice, to act against the wrongs committed by the Powers That Be, because silence can exact a heavy toll. Taking each of the nine in turn in a format that loosely follows that of a courtroom drama, the play presents us with their explanation for why they went to Catonsville. For some, their motivations sprang from their experiences abroad in places like Africa and Guatemala, where U.S. military and political pressure was brought to bear for commercial and elitist interests at the expense of the working class – a similar force underlying the Vietnam War. For others, it stemmed from witnessing civilian deaths and the deaths of all those young people drafted to serve in the military. For all, the Vietnam War posed a problem of moral urgency in regards to U.S. foreign policy. Today, the very choice of producing the play is itself a statement and alarm, and in a general sense, at least, it does stir the blood.
Yet the play focuses so much on the Christian-Catholic nature of the Nine’s motives that it seems more of an effort to reinvigorate a Christianity burdened by petit-conservatism and literal-minded fundamentalism – Christianity now recast as an activist force for the poor, the sick, the dead – than an effective call to action that summons all of humanity, regardless of religious and irreligious belief, to work for a better world.
More polemic than drama, though certainly theatrical in its presentation, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine ultimately ends up in a didactic limbo between explanation and inspiration. Yet, there’s no denying the power in its reminder that we are citizens of a bigger world than our politics will admit. The question of whether breaking the law and committing a crime are necessarily the same thing is but the obvious question for a play that asks for a deeper engagement with what goes on around us.
The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.Written by Daniel Berrigan. Directed by director Jon Kellam. Starring Andrew E. Wheeler as Daniel Berrigan; Scott Harris as Philip Berrigan; Chris Schultz as Thomas Lewis; Cameron Dye as David Darst; Corey G. Lovett as George Mische; Patti Tippo as Marjorie Melville; Robert Shampain as Thomas Melville; Paige Lindsey White as Mary Moylan; Ethan Kogan as John Hogan; and Adele Robbins as the Judge.
On stage at the Ivy Substation thrpough Saturday, March 21. For reservations and information, call The Actors' Gang Box Office at 310.838.GANG (310.838.4264) or go to www.theactorsgang.com.
Frédérik invites you to discuss The Trial of the Catonsville Nine and more at his blog (frederik-sisa.blogspot.com).