ARTS&LIFE
THEATER

T

o Kill a Mockingbird holds the record 
as the highest-grossing American 
play in Broadway history. Harper 
Lee’s beloved work won the 1961 Pulitzer 
Prize in fiction and was voted “America’s 
favorite novel.” 
 Academy Award, Emmy and Golden 
Globe-winner Aaron Sorkin, prolific screen-
writer and playwright of the television 
series Sports Night, The West Wing and 
The Newsroom has also had great success 
on Broadway with A Few Good Men, the 
revival of Camelot and adapting To Kill a 
Mockingbird. 
Sorkin’s play To Kill a Mockingbird, based 
on Harper Lee’s classic novel comes to 

Detroit’s Fisher Theatre March 5-17. Emmy 
Award-winner Richard Thomas, best known 
for his portrayal of John-Boy on The Waltons, 
and also for The Humans and Twelve Angry 
Men national tours, stars as small-town 
lawyer Atticus Finch during a time of racial 
injustice in Alabama in 1934. 
“With his theatrical adaptation, Aaron 
Sorkin looks at the character of Atticus Finch 
through a different lens. Aaron has stepped 
aside and framed the entire play along the 
notion of the children [Scout, Jem and Dill] 
who are now all grown and retelling the story 
of this moment in their lives,” says NETworks 
Presentations CEO Orin Wolf.
“This story is really anchored in the 

Aaron Sorkin’s play To Kill A Mockingbird
comes to the Fisher Theatre March 5-17.

JULIE SMITH YOLLES CONTRIBUTING WRITER

48 | FEBRUARY 29 • 2024 
J
N

Atticus Finch 
Through a 
Dif
 erent Lens

Orin Wolf