In the early 2000s, long before chants of “fake news” rang out from televisions and social media outlets across the nation, truth went on trial at a magazine called The Believer.
The dispute over an essay between its author and the magazine’s fact checker became the basis first for a 2012 book, then for a 2018 stage play, both titled The Lifespan of a Fact.
The play arrives at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts Carlos Alvarez Theater Sept. 4 and runs through Sept. 15.
A real newsie
The 100A Productions version of The Lifespan of a Fact stars Andy Thornton as author John D’Agata and Emily Spicer as editor Emily Penrose. As fate would have it, Spicer is a veteran journalist who retired in 2022 as features and food editor for the San Antonio Express-News.
Spicer said she’s been acting since age 13 in middle school theater, but the demands of her professional life kept her from the stage. Now with the job behind her, returning to theater with The Lifespan of a Fact “seemed like a really nice way to both revisit my theater past and my journalism past.”
In the role of editor, Spicer as Penrose oversees the argument between Thornton’s D’Agata character and fact-checker Jim Fingal, played by New York-trained San Antonio actor Michael Roberts.
D’Agata first wrote the essay in question for Harper’s Magazine in 2003 about the Las Vegas suicide of 16-year-old Levi Presley. The magazine rejected the essay due to multiple factual inaccuracies.
D’Agata then resold the essay to The Believer, where Fingal also found the piece riddled with inaccuracies and made-up details: from the number of strip clubs in Las Vegas, that the Korean martial art form was invented by an ancient prince rather than in the mid-20th century and, perhaps at the crux of the argument, whether it took Presley nine seconds or eight seconds to fall from the top of the highest tower on the Vegas Strip.
The author defends his right to stretch truths large and small to suit the art of his essay-writing, while the fact-checker replies that he doesn’t get to decide which facts are valid and which ones aren’t.
Improbably for a behind-the-scenes argument over editing, the dispute became a public debate and spurred a nationwide media argument over the case.
Either right or wrong
Reflecting on the tenets she followed during her journalism career, Spicer said, “things are either wrong or they aren’t. Things are either correct or they’re not. There wasn’t a whole lot of gray with regard to the accuracy of things.”
But the play, she said, hews to the journalistic standard of not stating an opinion on whose point of view is ultimately correct. “There’s not some big declaration. … It’s really a conversation and an exploration of the different viewpoints surrounding this subject matter of truth versus fact.”
And, Spicer insisted, it’s a comedy. The story goes way beyond a philosophical or academic argument, she said. “It becomes this incredibly emotional, hilarious back-and-forth conversation and debate about these points of view.”
The writing is “super sharp,” she said of the adaptation written by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell.
Tickets for The Lifespan of a Fact start at $35, available through the Tobin Center website.
