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This land is whose land?
The Philadelphia Artists’ Collective presents Susan Glaspell’s Inheritors
Jillian Ashley Blair Ivey
Susan Glaspell’s 1921 play Inheritors asks who really has a right to free speech during times of upheaval—or at any time—and what we’re willing to sacrifice for the sake of our safety and comfort. The play was written, in part, as a response to the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, but it’s painfully relevant in 2026, as the US Department of Homeland Security daily violates the First and Fourth Amendment rights of immigrants and protestors in Minnesota and elsewhere. Now, it gets a new production with the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective (PAC) at the Community College of Philadelphia’s black-box theater.
Glaspell wrote Inheritors in four acts, but PAC and director Abby Weissman are staging it as a two-act play. Most of the first half is set in 1879, with the balance of the first half and all of the second set in 1920. In 1879, we learn that midwestern landowner Silas Morton (Ethan Jovanovic) is in possession of a large property his father acquired from the local Native American tribe. Silas has long questioned whether his father paid the Natives a fair price for the land, or indeed whether the Mortons had done right by their land’s original stewards. Much to the chagrin of his friends and family, not to mention the representative of a nearby town that hopes to acquire some of this property (Jackson Purdy), Silas plans to turn the bulk of his land into a college.
Great performances
Although this section of Inheritors comprises no more than a quarter of the play, we see some of the production’s best performances here. As Silas, Jovanovic is equal parts amiable and passionate, so when he tells the simpering town representative he will not sell his land, the shift in his posture and look of fury in his eyes are especially striking. Playing Silas’s mother, Kirsten Quinn transforms herself into an elderly woman so completely that it was not until after the play was over and I reviewed the program that I realized she was the same performer I saw portraying another role later in the show. But perhaps my favorite performance in the two-hour-plus runtime is Benjamin Bass’s subtle performance as Silas’s friend and neighbor, the Hungarian refugee and Civil War veteran Felix Fejevary, whom Silas wins over with his passionate vision for his land.
Free speech at school, then and now
The balance of Inheritors, set during the fictional Midwest Morton College’s 40th anniversary celebrations, shows us what came of Silas’s decision, and of his friends and family.
At first, all seems well. The college is thriving, and the Morton board of directors has ambitions of transforming it into a major university. Felix Fejevary II (Justin Jain), the son of Silas Morton’s Hungarian neighbor, is the board president, and he is lobbying a state senator (Purdy) for support. It’s here that things really start to feel familiar, because the senator’s support is conditional. He doesn’t like the views of a Morton faculty member (Bass), so he won’t support extra funding for the school unless the professor in question is silenced or fired.
We have watched this very real scenario play out over the last 12 months, as the Trump administration has withheld or threatened to withhold funds from colleges and universities whose principles or professors don’t align with the administration’s politics. And, as the younger Fejevary does in the play, we have seen university leadership capitulate to political demands, only to discover yet more demands.
Family complications
Complicating manners further are Fejevary’s son, Horace (Zachary Valdez), and niece, Madeline (Cassandra Alexander)—the latter a descendant of Silas Morton’s son Ira (Jovanovic), and Fejevary, Jr.’s younger sister. Horace and Cassandra are on opposite sides of a controversy at school: whether a small number of Indian students have the right to protest British occupation of their country at Morton, or even whether they have a right to be at Morton at all. Horace wants to teach the foreign students a lesson, whereas Madeline supports their position. When Horace instigates a fight with the students, Madeline lands in legal hot water for lashing out in their defense, threatening the college’s future.
Why shouldn’t we stand up for immigrants?
As Madeline, Alexander is compelling and wide-eyed, but never naïve, and as the play marches toward its conclusion she becomes an avatar for us all. Because why shouldn’t she stand up for the immigrants in her community, especially when their challenges are much more dire than her own?
I saw Inheritors one week after the murder of Renee Good, and if our tears were any indication, I wasn’t the only person in the audience who was watching the play through that lens. When PAC programmed this show, nobody could have known just how relevant it would prove in January 2026.
Inheritors has been an important play for more than a century now, but perhaps never more than it is today. PAC does it justice. Get there before it closes on January 24.
What, When, Where
Inheritors. By Susan Glaspell. Directed by Abby Weissman. $18–35. Through January 24, 2026 at the Community College of Philadelphia’s Bonnell Building, 1700 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia. PhilaArtistsCollective.org.
Note that while the official address of all buildings at the Community College of Philadelphia is 1700 Spring Garden, the Bonnell Building can be accessed on the east side of 17th Street, just south of Spring Garden. Front desk staff can direct you to the building’s Black Box Theater.
Accessibility
CCP’s Bonnell Building and the Black Box Theater inside it are wheelchair-accessible.
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