The Life of Galileo

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war and was already in exile when Galileo was first produced. He rewrote the play in the 1940s, in collaboration with the well-known actor Charles Laughton, when he was living in America, and that version received its premiere in this country in 1947. Though about Galileo’s famous struggles with the Catholic Church 400 years ago, the play remains as timely as today’s blogs—witness the ongoing controversies about stem cell research and about evolution.

The U-M Residential College production of The Life of Galileo Thursday through Sunday, March 26–29, is part of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts theme semester “The Universe: Yours to Discover,” which commemorates the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s discoveries. RC drama lecturers Kate Mendeloff and Martin Walsh, of Shakespeare in the Arb fame, direct the play and act the title role respectively, leading a student cast. Though it’s not a musical, there is music in Galileo, as in many other Brecht plays. Mendeloff commissioned new music for this production, and composer Dennis Davenport’s settings of the couplets, Knittelvers, with which Brecht introduces the action of each scene, are in the style of early-¬seventeenth-century madrigals, but with a decidedly modern harmonic palette.