Looking for a Certain Kind of Truth: Writing and Performing a Play about Thomas Paine
Notes de la rédaction
Ian Ruskin est un homme de théâtre, un écrivain et un chercheur indépendant. D’origine britannique, il s’installe aux États-Unis en 1985 et se spécialise dans la production et l’écriture de pièces de théâtre consacrées à des figures historiques ayant défendu des valeurs de justice sociale. L’une d’entre elles est Thomas Paine, à qui il a consacré une pièce de théâtre et un film, qui a été diffusé sur PBS, la chaîne de télévision publique états-unienne. La pièce a, quant à elle, été montée aux États-Unis, en Australie et en Grande-Bretagne. Au mois de novembre 2024, il a présenté cette pièce, To Begin the World Over Again: The Life of Thomas Paine, dans le cadre d’un colloque organisé par l’université de Toulouse et consacré à la mémoire de la révolution américaine dans la société américaine contemporaine. Le Coin des Curiosités publie aujourd’hui son témoignage.
Texte intégral
1I am here, and I am thrilled to be here, to talk about writing my play To Begin the World Over Again: The Life of Thomas Paine. And here I am, an actor and writer, not a scholar, talking to a conference of scholars of history … A little challenging, perhaps …
2So, Looking for a Certain Kind of Truth. I chose the word “certain” to mean a particular kind of truth, a truth that will enable a writer to breath life into a character, ideally without distorting history … too much.
3And … searching for that truth … certainly for writers, it is not always an easy thing to find, and it seems that the more sources of information we have, the more that lies flourish, and the more outlandish the lies, the faster they spread. This has certainly been the case in America.
4I will only mention this particular man once, but during his 1 424 days as President, according to The Washington Post, not exactly a left wing publication, Trump told 30,573 lies. What they actually said was that he made 30,573 false or misleading claims … I say that he told 30,573 lies. And how many in the next four years … God knows.
5I often look to quotes when writing, which of course, are often credited to a number of different people and often misquoted. For example …
6I use a quote in my Nikola Tesla play “A lie can travel half way round the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes” attributed to Mark Twain.
7But I have also seen “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on” attributed to Winston Churchill.
8I have no idea which one is the true one but I do know that I prefer the Mark Twain version.
9Then there are those often inconvenient things called facts …
10American writer Bill Vaughan is quoted as saying: “It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world occasionally swapped history books, just to see what the other people are doing with the same set of facts.”
11This one resonates with me because, while I was born in England, I spent much of my childhood in America, and particularly in Philadelphia, the cradle of the American Revolution. In school we did three things every year. We went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, we went to Valley Forge, and we studied the American Revolution for weeks and weeks and weeks. French support in the War was never mentioned. And Thomas Paine, who lived for many years in Philadelphia, and wrote Common Sense in Philadelphia, was also never mentioned. Then I went back to England and a grammar school where we spent three days, and three days only, on the War of Independence, and it was a completely different war. Now it was the story of the magnificent Redcoats, who could have easily won the war but how could they possibly take such a bunch of uneducated rag-tag old men and young boys seriously? Then, of course these old men and young boys starting fighting in the most unfair way, firing at the magnificent Redcoats from behind trees and then running away into the woods. And, once again, the French were not mentioned, and the Englishman Thomas Paine was not mentioned. Not even given the honor of being called a traitor. Nothing. So I tend to approach historical facts with a slight skepticism.
12The first thing that I did in writing my Paine play was to read biographies including, chronologically, starting with the oldest that I could find,
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The Life of Thomas Paine – James Cheetham. 1809
then
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Life of Thomas Paine – Cleo Rickman. 1819;
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Life of Thomas Paine – Gilbert Vale. 1841;
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The Life of Thomas Paine – Moncure Daniel Conway. 1893.
Finally some new titles …
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Thomas Paine; Apostle of Freedom – Jack Fruchtman, Jr. 1994;
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The Unknown American Revolution – Gary B. Nash. 2005;
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Thomas Paine and the Promise of America – Harvey J. Kaye. 2006;
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Thomas Paine. Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations – Craig Nelson. 2006.
13I am glad that I did this, it gave me a clear understanding of the arc of Paine’s standing in the world, from a debunked traitor in 1809 to a misunderstood hero by 2006, with a few ups and downs on the way.
14I was also lucky enough to have the advice and guidance of five scholars, particularly Gary B. Nash and Harvey J. Kaye, and grateful to have their final approval, after notes, of the script. Their feedback was invaluable, as were their suggestions of other sources for me to investigate. And then, in 2022, I had what I call my “English Grammar School Moment”, a time for revision. I performed the play for the Thomas Paine National Historical Association in New Rochelle, New York. Three French scholars were there: Marc Belissa, Carine Lounissi and Yannick Bosc. They were kind enough to say some positive things about the play. But I then asked Marc if he had any specific comments about the French Revolution section of the play … He smiled … and said … “do you really want to know?” What could I say but … yes!
15I sent him the script and he sent back notes. He was very kind and gentle. Here are a FEW of those notes:
“The mob who took over the Bastille did NOT face an army of 30,000, who were outside Paris at the time.
The National Convention delegates were the Girondins, the Montagnards and La Plaine, no nobility or clergy.
Robespierre was not the bloodthirsty tyrant that you suggest.
The ‘Reign of Terror’ was invented after the fact by the Thermidorians.
Paine was probably not in danger of being executed.”
16Marc was also kind enough to say that he realized that some things were there for dramatic effect. I incorporated many, although I must confess not all, of his notes, but the play is certainly more accurate because of Marc.
17It would be interesting to have American scholars look over French books on the American Revolution to see what they might find … and they should certainly check out a lot of English books …
18But then I think that this is part of what makes America2026 so exciting, the exchange of ideas between European and American scholars to look again at an important world event, the American Revolution, and the effect that the world had on it, and the effect that it had on the world. And I must say that I consider Thomas Paine, as an Englishman who sparked the American Revolution, played a definite part in the French Revolution, and promoted the idea of Reason to the “common” man and woman, to be a unique figure in these extraordinary times.
19I would like to close with my thoughts on the subject of what is often called “Poetic License”. A definition:
“Poetic license is the freedom that writers, particularly poets, take to deviate from conventional rules, facts, grammar, or language usage in order to achieve a desired artistic effect. It allows a writer to prioritize creativity, emotional impact, or aesthetic expression over strict adherence to factual accuracy or formal structure.”
20This apparently applies in particular to poets and writers of fiction, although no one has ever used poetic license in historical plays like Shakespeare. Poor Richard the Third will never recover from what Shakespeare and his Richard the Third did to him!
21Elizabeth the First’s justification to be Queen was that her grandfather had become King Henry VII by defeating Richard in battle, and there were then a number of works written very hostile to Richard to justify his defeat. Shakespeare, as a playwright rather than a historian, ran with this hostility, adding a hunchback, a limp and a vicious ambition … to create an unforgettable villain, and assure him the approval of Elizabeth.
22On the other hand, there was modern day controversy about another royal English saga, The Crown, which led to Netflix adding, in the opening credits, that it was a “fictional dramatization inspired by real events”, also, in press releases saying that there were “fictional elements to explain emotional and personal aspects of the Royal Family’s lives”. Interesting that the public outcry, and the Netflix changes, only came about in the series’ Season Five, when it entered the touchy subjects of Charles and Diana’s marriage and, above all, her tragic death, events in the living memory of almost the entire audience. There was also the issue of so many English students watching the series and assuming that it was historically accurate. Why study history when you can watch it on television?
23I think that the poetic license that I take is a little less dramatic. I will give you two examples … My first play is about Harry Bridges, an Australian who came to California in 1918 and became a radical and visionary labor leader. He grew up in Melbourne with an English Protestant Father and an Irish Catholic Mother. His Mother insisted that he be an Alter Boy. Not very dramatic, but as a Choir Boy I could bring in beautiful voices singing something sacred, much more interesting, and so a Choirboy he became. Not factual, but I believe that this makes the issue of religion in this boy’s life easier for the audience to intellectually understand and to emotionally feel.
24With my Paine play, first, two things. Certainly in America, Paine appeals to a wide range of political thought, from the left to the right with Libertarians somewhere in the middle, and he is sometimes a hero to people strongly opposed to each other on almost every other subject. It is my belief that the Right’s love of Paine is based on a complete misunderstanding of a passage in Common Sense about the role of government, something that I address in the play. Second, anything that I read from Paine’s writings is absolutely accurate.
25Back to my poetic license … I do use a story, included in most biographies but with a strong dose of skepticism, echoed by Marc Bellisa. This is how my Paine tells it, sitting, in prison, on a low stool in a tight pool of light:
Then in a cell with three kind Belgians, it appeared that my death would come not by the blade but from typhus …when a miracle occurred …yes … even for an infidel deist like me …
When your time had arrived a mark was put on your cell door in the morning. Before midnight you were rounded up and taken to your “trial” and, usually on to meet your maker. Our time had arrived and our door was marked with a 4. Except the door happened to be open at the time, to allow more breezes into the cell to sooth my fevers. With the coming of the cool night air the door was closed, the mark was on the inside, and the angel of death passed over …
26But I then have Paine say: “Luck, a bribe, a well placed friend? God moves in mysterious ways.”
27My intention here is to offer three possible, possible, explanations. Beyond that it is a mystery but, for me, too good a mystery not to include, and I do think that it shows that Paine lived his live close to the edge, but with a delicious sense of humor.
28So, for me, poetic license is acceptable if it can make the deeper truth more understandable and emotional to an audience. People go to the theatre, or a film, or watch television, to be touched in some way. If I can open their eyes to a new way of looking at a few moments in history I am thrilled, but first and foremost I want to open their eyes to a particular man and to how those moments in history affected him and how, in some way, he played a part, not just in those moments, but in changing the world. I hope to not offend any historians along the way.
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Référence électronique
Ian Ruskin, « Looking for a Certain Kind of Truth: Writing and Performing a Play about Thomas Paine », L’Ordinaire des Amériques [En ligne], 234 | 2025, mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2025, consulté le 15 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/orda/12267 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15knb
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