Screenwriting Commons^™

Dogs In A Village, Karen Porter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nearly all of the histories of Shays's Rebellion point to debt as the reason why farmers in western Massachusetts rose against the courts and the state government in the fall and winter of 1786-87. Recent scholarship demonstrates a new line of reasoning based on the tax records of those involved. The following thesis, a screenplay, offers a fictional telling of this insurgency. The story is told using language pulled from contemporary letters and documents and follows a line of causation pointing to inequitable state tax structure and poor representation as the provocation. The response that ensued was not a rebellion …