Theater Review—

Westport’s ‘Sedition’ Is Relevant 

By Julie Stern

WESTPORT — Treason consists of waging war against one’s own country: giving aid and comfort to its enemies. Sedition, by contrast, involves speaking out against the government, in protest of its policies.

Throughout history, in times of war, intellectuals who disputed the wisdom of what their governments were doing have been singled out for punishment. Socrates was put to death by the “democratic” government of Athens, for “corrupting the minds” of his young disciples by telling them that the Peloponnesian War was a terrible mistake.

Those in power invoke the aura of “patriotism” to stifle criticism, and use the legal sledgehammer of Sedition laws to suppress dissent. They claim that this is simply carrying out “the will of the people” who elected the government and rightfully hate its enemies. In order to fortify their own position, they encourage “the people” to vilify the dissenters, deliberately blurring the distinction between treason and sedition.

Like the Inquisition, which conflated freedom of thought with heresy, making it a damnable offense, Sedition laws use fear to keep people quiet and acquiescent.

David Wiltse, Westport Country Playhouse’s playwright in residence, has used a true incident that involved his own grandfather as the basis of his play Sedition. In 1917, Andrew Schrag was chairman of the German Department at the University of Nebraska. When America entered the War with Germany, the Secretary of Defense ordered every state to establish its own “Council of Defense” to gather information and keep tabs on those who might be less than patriotic.

The Nebraska Council was particularly vigilant, and focused its attention on the university, calling it a “hotbed of sedition.” Because Schrag had made outspoken statements about the folly of the war, arguing that American liberty was not really threatened by Germany, and declaring the war less a conflict between good and evil (as President Wilson described it) than a chance for munitions companies to make money, he was one of 12 faculty members charged with “improper behavior.”

Although he was cleared of any of the specific itemized charges defined by the Sedition Act of 1918, the University Board of Regents got rid of him by abolishing the German Department altogether (just as during the cold war of the 1950s, Texas school boards would vote to remove world maps from school classrooms because they showed the Soviet Union and the Cincinnati Reds baseball team would attempt an ill-fated move to sanitize their image by renaming themselves the “Redlegs”).

As a dramatic reenactment of Wiltse’s grandfather’s experience, the play is somewhat polemical.  Deliberately baited by his wily antagonist, Megrim (the representative of the Defense Council) – who argues that while freedom of speech is a Constitutional American right, in time of war the “freedom not to speak” is more important – Schrag is goaded into reckless outrage. Well played by Chris Sarandon, he gives a scathingly cynical assessment of the limitations of democracy in a country where women, blacks and immigrants could not vote, and where those who could were responding automatically to the orders of their church, their party bosses, or the jingoistic news media. Being told what to do relieved them of the burden of having to think.

However, the play has plenty of relevance to our own time. The Sedition Act of 1918 is clearly a forerunner of today’s Patriot Act; the vehemence with which critics of the War in Iraq are charged with “not supporting our troops” or “being soft on defending our freedom,” echoes the accusations made against Schrag.  In his impassioned outrage against President Wilson, whom he sees as a would-be messianic figure convinced of his own absolute rightness, Schrag cries out that ignorance at the top is an insult to thinking minds. This brought murmurs of agreement from the entire audience.

Jeffrey DeMunn gives a strong performance as Megrim. In the tradition of Inquisitors everywhere, from Torquemada to Joe McCarthy, he brooks no doubts and has no mercy. His mission is to uphold Authority and root out any threat to its total power, because that is where his own power lies.

In the end, Wiltse’s point is that the real danger to our liberty lies not in a foreign enemy, but rather in the willingness to relinquish the freedom of speech and thought that are embodied in our Constitution, and which make Americans rebellious and independent minded and reluctant to embrace authority. If we can be coaxed or coerced or cheated into surrendering those civil liberties, we will not get them back, and we will find ourselves mired in the Orwellian world of Big Brother, where Ignorance is Strength, War is Peace, and Freedom is Slavery.

(Performances continue through Saturday, August 18. Call 203-227-4177 or visit WestportPlayhouse.com for tickets and other information.)