A play about Spinoza is a curtain-raiser for Lantern Theater

'Y ou don't often think of the words philosophy and festival as going together. But why not? Ideas are fun - they're more fun, more engrossing, the bigger they are. That's why we like big ideas around here."

That's Charles McMahon, artistic director of the Lantern Theater. He's explaining why Lantern is offering a Fall Philosophy Festival: Theater and the Age of Reason, Oct. 21-22. And the first play of Lantern's 2011-2012 season concerns that big thinker Baruch Spinoza.

New Jerusalem, The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656, by David Ives, runs through Nov. 6 (an extended run; see below). It tells of how 23-year-old Spinoza was interrogated and expelled by Amsterdam's Jewish community for his radical ideas. One of history's boldest thinkers lived out his short life - he was dead at 44 - as a quiet scholar and a grinder of glass lenses.

Spinoza was born into a Portuguese Sephardic community newly arrived in Amsterdam, which had recently broken with the Catholic Church. Amsterdam proclaimed itself a modern, tolerant state, but the paranoid politics of the renegade Netherlands, with its small army and flat, all-but-indefensible borders, intervened. The Jewish community, still insecure in its new home, realized its welcome was shaky. As McMahon puts it, "The authorities were on guard against radicalism, no matter what the religion."

Spinoza is considered a father of the Enlightenment, a likely hub for the fall festival. (He's also a star in what is becoming a big season for Jewish-themed theater in Philadelphia.) Lectures and panel discussions will mull Spinoza's thinking, the Jewish experience in Europe, and court proceedings as theater. For a final word, on Oct. 23, Enlightenment historian Jonathan Israel will explore "How Spinoza Made America Possible." A list of events appears at www.lanterntheater.org.

So far, both play and festival appear to be huge hits. Even before Wednesday's opening night, seven shows were sold out, and 60 percent of all tickets had been sold prior to previews. Originally slated to end its run Oct. 30, the show has been extended to Nov. 6.

"It's the largest presale in the 18-year history of Lantern Theater," says Megan Wendell of Canary Promotions, the company's marketers. Who knew folks around here were so hot for big ideas?