Petaluma Readers' Theater Presents Howard Zinn's Rebel Voices

The Occupy Movement has resulted from our nation's biggest problem- civil obedience. This show, written by Rob Urbinati, highlights a national tradition making a comeback this year: civil disobedience.

Rebel Voices is the dramatic counterpart to the book, "Voices of a People’s History of the United States," by historian Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove.  It is the companion volume to Zinn’s legendary “A People’s History of the United States”, which is used as a textbook in some classes in the AP US History program throughout the United States in high schools and colleges and has sold over one million copies.

It features dramatic readings of American Voices from speeches, letters, articles, memoirs, interviews, poems, songs and petitions of people like Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Samuel Clemens, and Helen Keller, as well as contemporary voices such as Iraq war resister Camilo Mejía, Starhawk, and Patricia Thompson, a survivor of Hurricane Katrina. 

Rebel Voices brings to life inspirational and challenging stories of protest from yesterday and today, moving chronologically across the expanse of American history. It is the voices of everyday women and men who fought against impossible odds to change their lives, their country, their world. The play seeks to combat hopelessness by being one of a growing chorus of voices igniting the forces responsible for arousing change and celebrating the indomitable human spirit. 

Past performances of "Voices of a People’s History of the United States" have featured acclaimed actors, musicians and activists. This multimedia production, directed by Roger Marquis, features an ensemble cast of local actors: Ronda Black, Ken Burgess, Joanna Espinosa, Lissa Ferreira, James Peterson, Joan Hawley, Steve Kirkbride , and Leslie Scatchard. Music performed by Jim Peterson.

 “My hero is not Theodore Roosevelt, who loved war and congratulated a general after a massacre of Filipino villagers at the turn of the century, but Mark Twain, who denounced the massacre and satirized imperialism. I want young people to understand that ours is a beautiful country, but it has been taken over by men who have no respect for human rights or constitutional liberties. Our people are basically decent and caring, and our highest ideals are expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which says that all of us have an equal right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The history of our country, I point out in my book, is a striving, against corporate robber barons and war makers, to make those ideals a reality — and all of us, of whatever age, can find immense satisfaction in becoming part of that.” Howard Zinn (8/24/22-1/27/10)

Petaluma Readers’ Theatre seeks to provide powerful and moving pieces of theatre read from scripts. It’s productions “do not surrender performance power because it is less “realistic” than conventional theater. Since the “real” events take place in the readers mind, each beholder can create idealized characters, scenery and textual perceptions, more believable than the director or scene designer can materialize.” William J. Adams

TICKETS: $12available online at www.brownpapertickets.com /event/216232, at Mail Depot or from cast members