The play depicts a fictional meeting between the man who survived the double lynching, James Cameron, and the woman who claimed to have been raped but later recanted, Mary Ball. As they recount the events of that night, the play uses the lynching as a fulcrum to explore how shifting memory has created what we now understand to be an immutable history.

The reading will be directed by ensemble member Dennis Delaney and will feature ensemble members Shelley Delaney, David Haugen, and award-winning actor David Toney, who was last seen in Athens in the School of Theater production of Charles Smith?s "Knock Me a Kiss" in May 2008.

Brick Monkey, southeast Ohio's only professional theater company, will perform the first public presentation of the "The Gospel According to James," which will receive its world premiere production at the Indiana Repertory Theater in March. It also will be produced by the Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago in May 2011.

The play was commissioned by the Indiana Repertory Theatre through funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Joyce Foundation.

Smith is head of the university's Professional Playwriting Program and playwright in residence at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. He is also an Ohio University Presidential Research Scholar in Arts and Humanities.