Theater Helps Us Remember the Scopes Trial 100 Years Later.

The article focuses on how the 1955 play *Inherit the Wind* reshaped public understanding of the 1925 Scopes Trial, in which Tennessee teacher John Scopes was prosecuted under the Butler Act for teaching evolution. While the original trial highlighted tensions between science and religion in education, the play reinterpreted it as an allegory for 1950s anti-communist McCarthyism and broader issues of intellectual freedom. Created by playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee and first produced by director Margo Jones, *Inherit the Wind* emphasized the right to think over ideological conformity, influencing popular memory and inspiring multiple revivals and film adaptations. The play demonstrates theater’s power to connect historical events to contemporary social and political concerns.