Margaret Chase Smith (above), the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress, challenged Sen. Joe McCarthy at a time when few lawmakers spoke out against his Red Scare hearings.

Our semi-staged readers’ theater production of Joe di Pietro’s four-character play dramatizes Smith’s courage in delivering her “declaration of conscience” on the Senate floor, denouncing members who were turning the body into “a forum of hate and character assassination.”

DiPietro’s historical drama resonates in our current period, with Smith prophetically calling for a renewal of “the right to independent thought,” noting that freedom of speech in America “has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.”

Join us for this riveting work of theater that holds a warning in our troubled political environment.