LINCOLN PARK — Thomas Jefferson and Edgar Allan Poe debate whether the Declaration of Independence applies to slaves in a new play by distinguished labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan.
"Monticello" debuts at 8 p.m. Thursday with previews through the weekend at the St. Bonaventure Oratory, 1625 W. Diversey Parkway, in a production by the Aurora Theater Works. According to Broadway World Chicago, the formal opening is Sunday in a 3 p.m. matinee.
The play posits that Poe, as a University of Virginia student, met Jefferson shortly before the president's death in July 1826. Jefferson is anguished over whether to come out in favor of saying the Declaration of Independence applies to slaves, or affirming the "peculiar institution" by saying it does not.
Jefferson was known to invite students from the university he founded to dinner. Poe enrolled at the school in 1826, and there are historical reports that Poe attended Jefferson's funeral following his death on July 4 of that year. The speculated meeting between the two has also been the basis for a lyric opera of the same title.
In a post on the play's webpage, Geoghegan admits to an almost lifelong interest in Jefferson, and in the Declaration of Independence, which he says applies to today's political world as "that most extreme of all calls to resistance."
In Geoghegan's work, as Jefferson himself mulls the lasting impact of that document in his dying days, his discussions with Poe are interrupted at points by Sally Hemings and others of Jefferson's slave staff. Poe becomes the perfect foil, Geoghegan writes, because as "a writer in formation" he recognizes "that Monticello is both the country’s glorious temple of reason but its nascent 'House of Usher.' Poe is up there to help us hear the screams."
Geoghegan is a noted Chicago labor lawyer who represented Friends of the Parks in its successful battle to keep the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art from being built on the lakefront near McCormick Place. He also ran unsuccessfully for Congress to replace Rahm Emanuel as a representative in a 2009 special election won by U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Chicago).
Tickets are $20, with the play running at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and at 3 p.m. Sunday through Sept. 3. Broadway World Chicago reports that Geoghegan will discuss the play with the audience weekly following the Sunday matinees.
