Summary

Actors Stefan Schnabel, Fran Groseclose, Gladys Holland, Wayne Tippet, and Joan Harve sit around a table and read from Robert Sherwood's plays "Petrified Forest," "Idiot's Delight," "Abe Lincoln in Illinois," and "There Shall Be No Night." 1957. Actors Stefan Schnabel, Fran Groseclose, Gladys Holland, Wayne Tippet, and Joan Harve sit around a table and read from Sherwood's plays "Petrified Forest," "Idiot's Delight," "Abe Lincoln in Illinois," and "There Shall Be No Night." 3:55 INTRO: Sherwood's history: Born 1866, newspaperman, editor, critic and playwright. "Dramatists express their times and guide us." 3:50 SCENE 1: "The Petrified Forest" 1934. A hitchhiker and a girl are in the Arizona Desert. The man delivers a monologue while the girl just asks questions. A rich woman gave the man money so he could write. he spent eight years on the Riviera, but no artist emerges. He came to America to discover this country and to look for something to believe in, live for, and die for. Nature is the cause of the world's chaos because nature proves it can't be beat. "I am too late…" MacAndrew has said this play is about man's struggle against nature and his coming to terms with his fellowman, but this excerpt hardly proves that point. 5:15 SCENE 2: "Idiot's Delight" Irene, e mistress of a munitions manufacturer congratulates her lover on Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. All that destruction will make them rich. God is playing a game called "Idiot's Delight. She looks around the dining room (in Switzerland) and sees all the young men (Italian tourists) as soldiers killing people while the wives back home hide in air raid shelters. The man (Achille) had a first wife who left him because he manufactured poison gas. He asks,"Who's the criminal? The seller or the buyer? I give people what they want. National honor is what make people cheer… The deadliest weapons are the most merciful." 5:00 SCENE 3: "Abe Lincoln In Illinois" Abe and Ann Rutledge and Lincoln's hesitant proposal of marriage when he learns she has been jilted. Ann asks for time, and Abe is stunned at the possibility that in time she could "fill her heart with his honesty and decency." 1:00 INTRO: MacAndrew: Sherwood was anti-war, but in choice of appeasement of war he would chose war. He served Roosevelt and OWI. He wrote a bio of Roosevelt. 6:00 SCENE 4: "There Shall Be No Night" 1939 inspired by Soviet invasion of Finland. Dr. Calo uses Biblical references in scientific work because "man will find light in the mysteries of his own mid… Sad that man can only be tested b disease…epidemic of war. Man's only defense against sickness is behind the forehead, inside man's head. Men under arms today have no illusion of glory, and that's progress. Illusions make men horrible when shattered, but grim resignation makes men say this is an evil deed and I have to do it. That is consciousness. Stefan Schnabel, Fran Groseclose, Gladys Holland, Wayne Tippet, and Joan Harvey.