To Begin the World Over Again: the Life of Thomas Paine

“To Begin the World Over Again: the Life of Thomas Paine” is an intimate look at the political firebrand who sparked the American Revolution, defined the French Revolution, and championed Reason as the basis of our beliefs and morality. And as we approach the 250th Anniversary of America this play invites you to reckon with the principles upon which America was founded, even as we both celebrate them and ask the vital question…do they still guide us today?

This play explores the 18th century world of Revolutions and Enlightenment, with one of its most extraordinary figures as your guide. Here was a man, brilliant, and both loved and hated, who lived his life in the middle of the changes whirling through the world, inspiring so many of them with his quill pen, as mankind was searching for new ways to be. And through it all Paine maintained an optimism that we truly could “begin the world over again”, a sentiment that forms the heart of this electrifying theatrical portrait.