THE ORIGINALIST: An Incredible Play about Justice Antonin Scalia
I saw an amazing play at the Pasadena Playhouse on Saturday: The Originalist by John Strand. The Originalist is about the last Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and it was amazing, regardless of what your political point of view may be.
The Originalist is set in 2012 and debuted in the spring of 2015, a year before Justice Scalia’s passing. Edward Gero plays Justice Scalia and does a masterful job of it bringing the late jurist back to life.
Gero prepared for the part by going to the Supreme Court to listen to a case being argued. He had lunch with Scalia. The two hit it off and had much in common, including the proximity of where their ancestors had lived in Italy.
According to the New York Times:
The play is generally a fair presentation of Justice Scalia’s legal views. It leans heavily, Mr. Strand said, on Joan Biskupic’s evenhanded biography “American Original.”
It was never my goal,” Mr. Strand said, “to mock him or slam him or set him up as a straw man and then slice him apart the way some conservatives would expect a theater to treat a character like Scalia.”
And the play succeeds while also pulling no punches.
Scalia is portrayed as a hard line conservative committed to upholding and interpreting the United States Constitution as he believes the Founding Fathers intended. That’s his belief in originalism that defined his tenure on the High Court.
Originalism is also what his supporters most revered about Scalia. And it’s what his detractors reviled about him.
The character of Kat takes on the role and the ideology of his detractors. She labels herself a “flaming liberal.” She sees the Constitution as a living document that can and must change over time.
Kat comes to clerk for Scalia at the Supreme Court.
While Kat and Scalia verbally spar on the hot button issues of our day — same sex marriage, the 2nd Amendment, abortion, and the death penalty — they never become petty or personal in their debates. Nor do they give much ground to the other.
What does shine through though is that despite their very different political points of view, both see the humanity of the other. While some viewed Scalia as a monster, it was Kat’s desire to understand him for he truly was.
In the process it becomes evident that those things which we don’t understand are the things that scare us. This keeps people divided and often causes them to characterize their opponents as monsters.
It’s difficult in America today for people to find common ground, especially when it comes to political matters.
The Originalist doesn’t so much stake out such ground. Rather it shows that two people with vastly different ideologies can begin to find commonality based on the fact that they are both human beings.
That’s the real power of The Originalist. I’m grateful I had the opportunity to see it. If you get a chance to see it or read the play, you definitely should.