Cumberland County Playhouse, Scopes Fest's FRONT PAGE NEWS Coming to Dayton

Following last year's successful run, Cumberland County Playhouse and the Scopes Trial Festival of Dayton, Tennessee, will once again co-produce Front Page News: Dayton and the World-Famous Scopes Trial, July 17-26, presented in the famous courtroom where Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan battled in 1925.

Front Page News: Dayton and the World-Famous Scopes Trial is described as "the historically accurate play with music," and premiered during last year's Festival. Based on a script by Deborah Harbin, this new version was created by Playhouse Producing Director Jim Crabtree and Grammy Award nominee Bobby Taylor.

Author/director Crabtree has increased cast size in 2015 to more than 30 cast members, with actors from Dayton, Athens, Spring City, Chattanooga, Crossville, Fairfield Glade and Pleasant Hill. The cast members portray the "People of Dayton and Tennessee," who welcome spectators and visitors, and take audiences back to 1925 in song and action. In turn, the "townsfolk" become famous attorneys, reporters from around the world, church choirs, street musicians and small town Tennessee witnesses, judge and jury, preachers and spectators. During the actual trial, they all crowded into the town, courtroom, and courthouse lawn (when the trial moved outside for relief from the July heat in that sweltering Tennessee Valley summer)

"Front Page News is historically accurate, a celebration of faith, freedom and tolerance-not to be confused with the fictionalized Inherit the Wind," said Crabtree, a 2013 First Night Honoree. "I find real history has more excitement."

"Our desire to produce a historically accurate account of the Scopes Trial and the events surrounding it dovetails nicely with the Playhouse's desire to honor rural Tennessee history and heritage through top-quality theatrical story-telling," says Scopes Trial Festival chair Tom Davis. "Front Page News blends history, entertainment and a deep respect for the feelings of the community that sought some publicity, but rapidly saw its plan hijacked by those who had their own agendas."

Since 1989, the Dayton festival has helped to recreate the carnival atmosphere that surrounded the 1925 trial with music, crafts, food, and displays of antique cars and tractors on the courthouse grounds.

Currently playing at Cumberland County Playhouse in Crossville: Singin' in the Rain, through July 12; Smoke on the Mountain, through October 10; and Mary Poppins, through August 16. Upcoming is the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, A Chorus Line, July 24 through August 28.

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