In 1968, nine people walked into the draft board in Catonsville, Maryland and took 378 files of young men. These records were incinerated in the parking lot with homemade napalm, the incendiary used extensively by the United States military in Vietnam. These nine Catholic priests and nuns felt their Christian morals required them to act on what they believed regardless of the personal cost. They were arrested. The Trial of the Catonsville Nine is a 1971 play by Daniel Berrigan, one of the participants in this historic act of civil disobedience.
After this incident, the Catonsville Nine issued a statement: “We confront the Roman Catholic Church, other Christian bodies, and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country’s crimes. We are convinced that the religious bureaucracy in this country is racist, is an accomplice in this war, and is hostile to the poor.” The significance of this event helped shape the opposition to the Vietnam War away from street protests to repeated acts of disobedience. Father Berrigan and his brother Philip were later featured on the cover of Time Magazine.
The transcripts of the trial are the basis for this work. These activists were protesting the war’s legality, the forced shipment of thousands of young Americans to their deaths and the slaughtering of innocent people. Is the burning of paper a crime but not the burning of children with these horrible weapons of mass destruction? Saving lives may have been their primary motivation. Criticizing a society’s complicity was the big target. Were all of these people in Vietnam villages communists? Why is America helping to overthrow governments in Asia, Africa and Latin America? At what point might this aggressive foreign policy become our domestic policy?
Adapted and directed by Jack Cummings III, this play is brimming with thoughtful discussions about morality and government. Was this war genocide? Do we use military strength solely to further our economic and business interests? Should lawyers and judges have a moral compass while interpreting the law? Why were privileged young men given deferments disproportionally to the poorer and less advantaged?
In this staging, the play has been modified from an eleven person cast to just three who share all the roles. This production is performed onstage with the audience sitting in pews on four sides. Period memorabilia is scattered on the desks. When the three Asian actors enter and begin looking at newspaper clippings, we join them in our reconsideration of history. The Trial of the Catonsville Nine is now a memory play at a time of potentially catastrophic moral ambivalence in America.
David Huynh, Mia Katigbak and Eunice Wong keep us riveted to the words and thoughts of this time, effortlessly switching from judge to defendant. As can be expected in a production by the Transport Group, the creative team (Peiyi Wong, R. Lee Kennedy and Fan Zhang) has beautifully designed this environment to let the uneasy mood linger as the dramatic story soars. The recurring superlative quality and artistic variety produced by this theater company is peerless on any New York stage right now. Feel free to attend, even if your bone spur is acting up.