JAMESTOWN – A staged reading of the play, “Mountain The Journey of Justice Douglas,” will be presented March 29 by Department of Theatre and Dance Professor James Ivey and seniors Lindsay Zimmerman and Steve Russell at the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown.

The event is slated for 8 p.m. at the center located at 305 E. 4th St. Prior to the performance will be a reception for SUNY Fredonia alumni at 6 p.m. in the center’s banquet room.

Dr. Ivey joined the faculty of theatre and dance at SUNY Fredonia in fall 2000 as associate professor and chair of theatre. He performed at the Jackson Center once before in a one-man show depicting the life of attorney Clarence Darrow. Dr. Ivey has also trained with Antonio Fava at the Scuola Internazionale dell’Attore Comico in Reggio-Emilia, Italy, in the tradition of commedia dell’arte while on sabbatical in fall 2006, and for the last two seasons led the Acting Troupe at SUNY Fredonia’s Madrigal Feaste.

Zimmerman is a musical theatre major from Rochester, and Russell a musical theatre major from Buffalo.

The play, by Douglas Scott, is an exploration and celebration of the life of William O. Douglas (1898-1980). Beginning and ending on the last day of his life, the play spans his 81 years: as Justice on the Supreme Court where he was defender of civil liberties, personal privacy and the wilderness, as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission fighting a corrupt Wall Street, professor at Yale, his four marriages, his mountain climbing and globetrotting through such lands as Iran and the Himalayas, and his childhood in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. The issues are as timely as the morning’s headlines.

The action of the play occurs within the mind of a dying man. Playing against the other two actors, who enact a multitude of memories (e.g., FDR, Richard Nixon, Louis Brandeis, his own parents, wives and children), Douglas struggles to find the meaning of his life. The play ends with a passionate reaffirmation of the power of courage over fear, of the individual over the technological state.

Tickets for the staged reading are $10/person ($5/student or senior). The hors d’oeuvre reception prior to performance is complimentary for Fredonia alumni.

Alumni who wish to participate can send $10/person (check made payable to “Fredonia Alumni Association”) to Office of Alumni Affairs 286 Central Ave., Fredonia, NY 14063, no later than March 24. For more information, contact the Fredonia Office of Alumni Affairs at 673-3553. Tickets for the general public are available at the Jackson Center.