Last week, the Cato Institute hosted a theatrical reading of selected scenes from Ayn Rand’s We the Living/The Unconquered. In the panel discussion that followed, ARI’s Onkar Ghate commented on several topics, including Ayn Rand’s development as a writer, the difference between teaching philosophy and dramatizing it in a novel, and the value of a plot that’s driven by conflicts between good people.
The theatrical reading of Ayn Rand’s We the Living, and the accompanying panel discussion, featuring ARI’s Onkar Ghate, will be brought to you live from the Cato Institute’s Hayek Auditorium, today, July 11, at 6:45 p.m. Eastern. Watch here.
“Trump’s election motivated me to bring Ayn Rand’s story of life in Soviet Russia to Washington, D.C.,” said Ann Ciccolella, the Austin Shakespeare artistic director who is the organizing force behind the upcoming theatrical reading and panel discussion of scenes from Rand’s We the Living/The Unconquered at the Cato Institute on July 11. “As actors bring to life scenes from Rand’s play, I expect their salience, given today’s authoritarian trends, will ring out.”
You’re invited to attend ARI’s eighth annual Atlas Shrugged Revolution dinner on September 29, 2016. Those registered for the event will enjoy a special theatrical staged reading of Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living, in commemoration of the novel’s 80th anniversary.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living. In her foreword to the novel, Rand explains that although the book is set in 1920s Soviet Russia, We the Living is not a historical novel: it “is a story about Dictatorship, any dictatorship, anywhere, at any time” and its goal is to show what “the rule of brute force does to men and how it destroys the best.”
Thanks to generous support from donors, ARI provides free copies of Ayn Rand’s works to teachers throughout the United States and Canada. Compared to the prior year, the 2014 – 15 school year marked a dramatic increase in books distributed. Nonfiction requests — including Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and Philosophy: Who Needs It — reached an all-time high.
Almost seventy years after the publication of Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living, Dr. Robert Mayhew is releasing never-before published versions of Rand’s theatrical adaption of the novel “The Unconquered”: With Another, Earlier Adaptation of “We the Living.”