August 18, 2007 - Culver City, California

 

Photos from the reception following the reading of "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine", a benefit performance including Martin Sheen and Tim Robbins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABOUT THE PLAY...

 

In an action that galvanized the Vietnam War protest movement, nine people, including Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan, raided a Maryland draft board in 1968 and burned thousands of Selective Service records.

 

"When...at what point...will you say no to this war? We have chosen to say with the gift of our liberty, if necessary our lives: the violence stops here, the death stops here, the suppression of the truth stops here, this war stops here."

 

Faced with the prospect of a prison sentence for burning draft records, Daniel Berrigan, a Catholic priest and pioneering figure in the peace movement, uttered these words in a Maryland courtroom in 1968.

 

On this evening, nearly 40 years later, the same words flowed passionately from the lips of actor Martin Sheen, who portrayed Berrigan in a benefit performance of "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine" at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. Actor Tim Robbins read the part of Phil Berrigan.

 

Proceeds from the event went to the Actors’ Gang, a Culver City-based theater company, and Office of the Americas, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization focused on promoting social justice and peace internationally.