Richard Dreyfuss starting contest for playwrights to promote civics lessons

An Academy Award-winning actor with a passion for civics wants to use the arts to get more class time for lessons on government.  

Actor Richard Dreyfuss came to the National Constitution Center to talk about the Dreyfuss Initiative, which tries to bring civics lessons back into the classroom.  He plans to make it entertaining by sponsoring a competition for playwrights.

“Plays that are based on known things or unknown things of which there are gazillions, and at the end of every season someone or someones will get a phone call and faint dead away because they will receive a phone call and they will win $300,000,” said Dreyfuss.

Dreyfuss says the Initiative will build a home on hallowed ground.

“The direct descendant of George Washington’s brother has given us the property called the Happy Retreat, which is a series of building and public places in West Virginia a spit away from Washington, D.C., to establish the very first institute for the support of enlightened values and republican democracy,” he said.

Dreyfuss says his goal is to educate the public on its role in the U.S. democratic system.