It Can't Happen Here: A Stage Reading

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum and Global Works present a stage reading of the classic 1936 dystopian political play It Can't Happen Here, dramatized by Sinclair Lewis and J.C. Moffitt and adapted by Noel Koran, from Sinclair Lewis's 1935 dystopian political novel of the same name.

Experience the play that asks the most uncomfortable question in American politics: What happens when the unthinkable becomes reality? Could it happen here? Witness the chillingly prescient tour de force that feels less like a period piece and more like today’s headlines. Originally written by Nobel Prize-winner Sinclair Lewis during the height of the Great Depression, It Can’t Happen Here is a satirical, alarming look at the fragility of American democracy that has become an eerily timeless warning for the modern age.

The play follows the meteoric rise of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a populist politician who promises to restore the country’s greatness and save the nation. Upon his…