FARMINGTON – According to Dan Robbins, the process of becoming a new man starts with the feet.

“Once I get the feet down correctly, the rest just moves right along. Then, I layer on movement and posture, speech, and dialect,” explained Robbins.

Robbins will be playing fundamentalist preacher and attorney Matthew Harrison Brady in the Sandy River Players’ production of “Inherit the Wind,” which opens at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 13, at the University of Maine at Farmington’s Alumni Theater.

University English professor Dan Gunn will play opposite Robbins as lawyer Henry Drummond.

“Inherit the Wind” was written in 1950 by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. It is a dramatization of the Scopes trial of 1925, in which Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan faced off in court to argue the case for and against the teaching of evolution in schools.

The debate was sparked when a Dayton, Tenn., high school substitute science teacher named John Scopes flouted state law and taught evolution in the classroom. William Jennings Bryan – lawyer, women’s suffragist, three-time Democratic presidential candidate, and anti-evolutionist – agreed to prosecute.

Defense attorney and modernist Clarence Darrow volunteered to take up Scopes’ defense, arguing that the law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in Tennessee was unconstitutional.

The trial took on a “carnival atmosphere,” and was the first legal proceeding to be broadcast live on the radio.

Darrow himself requested that Scopes be found guilty, in order that the matter be elevated to the state Supreme Court. The teacher was fined a token sum of $100, and the trial is widely accepted as being a victory for evolutionists.

“Inherit the Wind” was written 25 years after the Scopes trial, and has been performed in theaters across the country since 1950.

Director Jayne Decker of the University of Maine at Farmington chose the play because it seemed to be “the right play for the right time.”

“I do feel that the teaching of evolution is threatened in many of our schools today,” she said, “and one of the most important aspects of the play – the power to think freely – is something that as educators, I don’t think we should lose sight of.”

The Sandy River Players has added its own interpretations onto Lawrence and Lee’s script. Decker has staged the production so the audience sits immediately behind the jury.

“I hope to get the audience involved in the debate,” she said.

Music has also been added to the score.

“We have a number of extremely talented musicians in the cast,” Decker noted, “and we’ve added some period church hymns and folk songs.”

Actors, too, have added their interpretations onto the script. “I love history, and so I really enjoy acting in historical productions,” said Dan Robbins, who has been researching William Jennings Bryan in order to understand his character better. The Brady character is based on Bryan.

“Brady is often played as a buffoon,” he said, “but I’ve found a lot of richness in this role. There were a lot of wonderful things about the man; he was pro-equality and anti-war.”

How does Robbins walk like Matthew Harrison Brady?

“Stiffly. William Jennings Bryan was 65 years old and a diabetic during the Scopes trial,” Robbins explained. “The play shows him passing out in the end, but in real life, Bryan died five days after the final verdict. Diabetes affects the extremities; it makes it hard for people to move. So I walk stiffly.”