‘Fahrenheit 451’ Rekindles Bradbury’s Warning for Literature Live!

In 1953, author Ray Bradbury published “Fahrenheit 451,” a dystopian novel about a futuristic United States where books are outlawed and burned. Even their mere possession is enough to warrant arrest, if not a harsher punishment.

The novel’s numerical title references the temperature at which book paper catches fire. Bradbury said his concept for “Fahrenheit 451” was based on the politics of the day — specifically, the Red Scare and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee which sought to root out the communists among us, and the Nazi book burnings in Germany in the1930s.

But Bradbury also pointed to another influence as well — one that spoke presciently of a world not yet in existence in the early 1950s — and that is the dumbing down of Americans. In the novel, literature has been supplanted by invasive forms of mass media (and dare we say it, misinformation) designed to shorten attention spans, thereby organically leading people to read less, to the delight of the government.

Sound familiar?

Beginning this week, a stage version of “Fahrenheit 451” will flare to life at Bay Street Theater. Offered under the banner of the theater’s Literature Live! educational programming for high school students, the play will be directed by Stephen Hamilton, a Bay Street Theater co-founder.

Bradbury’s novel tells the story of Guy Montag, a firefighter in a not-too-distant future where all houses are fireproof. So, rather than extinguishing blazes, fire departments are called in to intentionally set them in order to destroy books that have been secreted away in homes. Montag (played by John Kroft), questions the morality of destroying books and the lives of those who keep them, but he does so privately, given that his wife, Mildred (Daniela Mastropietro) is an emotionally troubled soul who questions nothing and spends her waking hours with the characters she encounters on the screen in their living room.

Montag starts hiding books taken from fire scenes and becomes more vocal in his dissatisfaction with the status quo, much to Mildred’s alarm. He finds a kindred soul in his neighbor, Clarisse (Anna Francesca Schiavoni), a spirited young woman who defies convention, rejects video screens and embraces the natural world around her. Another sympathetic soul, Professor Faber (Matthew Conlon), becomes a secret coach (using a communication device called “seashells” that we would recognize as earbuds today) as Montag starts to actively push back against societal norms. But when he becomes too outspoken about the value of literature and independent thinking, Montag risks overplaying his hand. Beatty (J. Stephen Brantley), the firehouse supervisor, quickly recognizes Montag’s defiance because he, himself, had once felt that same way about books and the knowledge they contain. Meanwhile, war is breaking out and perils are everywhere.

In a recent interview just as rehearsals were getting underway at Bay Street, Hamilton explained that the stage version of “Fahrenheit 451” differs a good deal from Bradbury’s original novel. There’s no war in the play version and Clarisse, who is a teenager in the book, is aged up a bit in this production to make a budding romance between her and Montag more palatable.

“Also, Beatty becomes a hero in the play,” added Hamilton. “If you can imagine Sherlock Holmes and [the villain] Moriarty as two sides of the same coin, Beatty is the entire coin — and the Sherlock references in the script are really playing into that.”

By way of examples, Hamilton explained that there’s a scene in the play where it is revealed that Beatty has taken a copy of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles” from a book burning at the home of Mrs. Hudson (Nicole Marie Hunt) — a character who shares her name with Sherlock Holmes’s landlady. As he leafs through the book he lights his pipe, just like Holmes.

“Beatty’s got the mind of Holmes and Moriarty,” Hamilton said of the character’s dual nature. “The really intriguing thing is that what you’re hearing is a mirror between Montag and Beatty. Beatty was Montag as a kid, but chose to abandon literature and truth.

“For some reason he takes this hard right,” he added. “Until he sees Montag, who’s going through those same things and he thinks, ‘This is the last chance for me.’”

One of the most intriguing — if not terrifying — characters in “Fahrenheit 451” is one that is entirely fictional. The Hound, as it’s called, is a modern-day technological canine robot engineered to track scents. The vicious robot is sent out by the authorities in order to locate people on the run. But instead of teeth, the robo-dog’s mouth is outfitted with a hypodermic needle that injects Novocain into the legs of its prey to incapacitate them, or, when warranted, more lethal drugs that can be applied directly to the heart.

In an example of life imitating art, Hamilton explained that in creating the Hound’s presence on the Bay Street stage, the show’s designers explored potential renderings with the use of AI technology to bring the robo-dog to life on screen.

“It’s a life form that’s silicon as opposed to carbon-based,” Hamilton said. “Bradbury was writing in the early ages of computers. He extended that, and in reading sci-fi of the time, was imagining AI and supercomputers. He could see where it was headed.”

When asked about political parallels to current events that he sees in the play, Hamilton responded, “I think the political nature has to do with how Beatty sets up the message that books got shorter, education was dismissed as unimportant, sports became huge and things got compressed. So, people lost interest in reading literature.

“People saw it happening and did nothing,” Hamilton continued. “At a certain point it became part of the regime. Not only did books become unimportant, but they were banned. In order to retain the power structure, independent thought had to be banned by the regime. The justification is that independent thought causes anxiety and depression.”

To illustrate the point, Hamilton recites Beatty’s speech from the play, which is particularly revelatory.

Beatty says, “All of this happened in plain sight. Right under our noses. There were no government regulations, not at first. No censorship. We did it to ourselves, children. We saw it happening before our eyes and we said, ‘Yes, this is good.’ It was like watching a jet car hitting a brick wall at 100 mph, but in slow motion … And we did nothing. Nothing!

“And thank our lucky stars that we didn’t, because we are so much happier for it, right? There you have it, children. Lecture’s over!”

“Fahrenheit 451” runs November 13 to November 30 at Bay Street Theater. A special Pay What You Can Night will be offered for the play’s first performance at 7 p.m. on Thursday, November 13. Audiences are invited to pay whatever price they choose for that show only. Tickets will be available in person only at the Bay Street Theater box office beginning at 11 a.m. on November 13, first come, first served. For more information or tickets for other public performances, which are $50 to $120, visit baystreet.org or call the box office at 631-725-9500. School groups interested in attending daytime student performances should call 631-725-0818 ext. 107 or email Bethany Dellapolla at bdellapolla@baystreet.org. Bay Street Theater is on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor.