"First Freedom" Dinner Show

"First Freedom" Dinner Show

An original musical staged as a dinner show inside the Historic Pioneer Courthouse on St. George
Boulevard. It dramatizes the argument between James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and
George Mason over whether the new republic should guarantee freedom of conscience.

• When: a run of evenings in September
• Where: Historic Pioneer Courthouse, 97 East St. George Boulevard, St. George
• Format: dinner and performance together

The story ends with Virginia's Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom, passed in 1786 — the
first legislative act to separate church from state and protect individual religious liberty, and
the direct ancestor of the First Amendment. The courthouse itself dates from the 1870s, which gives
the production a room roughly of the period it is arguing about.