hybrid – in person and on Zoom. For the Zoom link send a request for the link by email, to HumanstGroup@first-unitarian-pgh.org.

Tuesday May 5, 7:30 -9:00 pm Schweitzer room

Title: “To begin the world over again: the life of Thomas Paine”

This is the title of a one-person show written, and performed over 500 times in North America, Europe, and Australia, by actor Ian Ruskin. We will show a version of this play produced by PBS in 2016. This year is the 250th anniversary of Paine’s Common Sense, which persuaded many colonists in America to support the war for Independence. But Common Sense is far from Paine’s only accomplishment. Did you know that in the evening before crossing the Delaware with his troups, Washington had his officers read to the demoralized enlisted men Paine’s pamplet American Crisis, which contains the line “These are the times that try men’s souls”. Victory at the Battle of Trenton followed early the next day. Or did you know that Paine narrowly escaped beheading during the French revolution? Or that because of his humanist writings while imprisoned in Paris, he was rejected by the country he helped found, and is the only Founding Father with no memorial in Washington DC? Come to watch the film with us and see all this and more presented in dramatic form on our “big screen”!