Brick Monkey Theater Ensemble presents "Smith Unearthed"
Dec 05 2008
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Free Show (No Tickets Needed) |
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THIS IS A FREE SHOW, NO TICKETS ARE NEEDED!
Brick Monkey Theater Ensemble, Southeastern Ohio's Professional Theater Company, will present a workshop reading of SMITH UNEARTHED, a new play written by ensemble member Erik Ramsey.
Erik
Ramsey’s Smith Unearthed poses this
question: How did Joseph Smith, Jr., a failed oracle and convicted conman, rise
to become the prophet and founder of the Mormon Church – arguably the fastest
growing religion in the world today?
The play
chronicles the days leading up to Christmas, 1825 when Joseph Smith, Jr. and
his father, on the run from the law, return in disgrace to the family farm in
upstate New York to save their house from being repossessed. In the process of
escaping the clutches of both their creditors and the investors they’d recently
fleeced, they lay the foundations of Mormonism.
Based on
historical accounts of Mormonism’s early years, Smith Unearthed dramatizes the moment in time when Junior first
begins to believe he has been spiritually imbued with the true story of the
American continent: that Native Americans are actually a lost tribe of Israel
and that he, Joseph, is the one man who knows the history of Jesus Christ’s
appearance to them here.
Disillusioned
by his failures dowsing for precious minerals as a “seer for hire”, and
disappointed in himself for turning his gift for divination into a cynical
grift, Junior hopes to marry and find a simpler life free of prophecy, real or
invented. But instead of climbing from the legal and ethical hole he’s dug
himself into, he digs deeper and strikes a different kind of gold.
No
scholars deny Smith practiced magic, but no one knows for certain if that magic
was simply a combination of charisma and sleight of hand or truly anointed and
supernatural. “Smith Unearthed” asks an audience to divine the truth of the
matter for themselves.
