Outline (Monkey trial)

Okay, here’s my advice for the world of writing: Always make an outline.  It really helps.  I didn’t realize it until late in college, but once you have an outline, you just need to fill out the rest with a few sentences to make paragraphs, and that’s easy.

So here’s my outline for my play (first act so far) on the Scopes Monkey Trial based on the actual facts of the trial:

Four actors and a table.

scene 1: Rappleyea family in dayton waiting for father to get home.  The kids hate Tennessee after moving from New York.  The wife is trying to hold everything together for her family.  The father comes home and they talk about how there isn’t enough money for a carnival to get in some outside people to the town.  He takes out a newspaper and sees the headline for the new Tennessee law, making the teaching of evolution illegal.

scene 2:  Basically just a scene to get the story going: The newly formed ACLU in NYC.  the members are furious as they look at the paper.  they brainstorm a way to fight what they see as an affront to free speech.  They decide to buy a full page add in the Ohio paper, offering to pay for the legal fees and any fines incurred by someone that defied the law.

scene 3: might be the most important scene of the play, setting up the whole premise that the whole thing was orchestrated: the city council is having a meeting, and one of the members is reading the paper with the ACLU ad in it.  They decide that having this high profile trial will bring in the media and much needed money to the town.  Scopes mentions that he’s substituting as biology teacher at the school and says that he thinks the law is stupid and would be happy to try teaching evolution.

Scene 4: quick scene showing William Jennings Bryan entering the prosecution: WJB is reading a newspaper about the arrest of Scopes and decides that this is a good chance to get back in the public spotlight.  He collects his team and heads for Dayton.

Scene 5: The final scene of act 1 introduces Clarence Darrow: Rappleyea goes to NYC to recruit Darrow to lead the defense.  Darrow talks about putting the law on trial in a misdemeanor case.  He first brings about attacking creationism, and the need to bring the media on their side.

End act 1