The election is over; the debates are not. One in particular has continued for more than 80 years: evolution vs. biblical creation. It's bringing Ed Asner to Boulder to play William Jennings Bryan in The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial. The L.A. Theatreworks, known for its radio plays, is staging the drama about the 1925 trial of a schoolteacher that brought Bryan and Clarence Darrow - played by John Heard - to a small Southern town. It's Asner's third tour in the role, staged as reader's theater, in which the actors use scripts onstage. He took time recently on the phone to speak about issues past and present with Rocky theater critic Lisa Bornstein.

You're crossing the middle of the United States in winter, performing this show in a different town nearly every night. What were you thinking?

It's a chiller here, honey. I need to be examined. I love the piece. I love doing it, I love what I'm asked to do and I love the camaraderie of my fellow players. And I love, above all, the point we make in a divided America - I'm speaking, in a way, religiously, sociologically.

Most people know about the Scopes Monkey Trial through Inherit the Wind. Why do this play instead?

Very frankly, I think it's a better script. I think it limns the question more intensely and deals with it in a thought-provoking manner. People may not be able to point out the differences, but I think they'll think harder when they leave the performance.

You mentioned a divided America. How divided are we?

Fundamentalism has much more sway in this country than in any other Western civilized nation. It has always been exercised, and most of the time there have been gentlemen's agreements as to how far to go here, how far to go there. I think that we (the United States) are the poster boy in terms of the battle between creationism or intelligent design, however you wish to call it, and evolutionary science. The advance of science and the advance of sophistication in our country, although slower than in other countries, keep eating inroads into the bastion of fundamentalism, and they fight harder to retain their strength. Texas just passed a school book law, and they dictate the books that much of the rest of the country get. They just got a mild ruling passed whereby students, while being taught evolutionary science, would be taught to question it, as they should, but it's a dispensation for intelligent-design believers.

Is that why you're touring the middle of the country as opposed to, say, large cities on the coasts?

I suppose the invitations or acceptances of our program come from those places that feel that some preaching to the choir must take place. My best example is a matinee that we gave to mostly (home-schooled students) in Green Bay, Wis. After we gave this matinee, finally in frustration at the way the questioning was going, one of the actors stood up and said, "How many of you believe the world was created in six days?" And two- thirds of the kids raised their hands, after seeing our show. No doubts, no challenges.

Didn't that make you feel as if the play had little effect?

There is that wonderment in our brains. With that type of result ensuing, I think, it reminds us that the battle is not over by any means, that we must go out seeking converts to our way of thinking. I can remember one woman standing up there, nicely dressed, certainly a comfortable-looking matron, who said: "Well, all I know is, I don't come from a fish." So it's that awesome spectacle that dominates many people who can't take into account the millions of years that take place in evolution.

Is Bryan, who stood for the biblical side, more fun to play?

Oh, I think so. His intensity, his emotionality, his total belief. He plays a man who loses, at least in the presentation, as he does in Inherit the Wind, but he goes down fighting, and swinging. And in those swings, you see the total flaws and the judgment of this man who was a great American. I can well understand the emotionality of argument dictated by faith and emotion. I certainly attempt to fill his shoes and his intense belief that the Bible is the word of God and the word of God is everything.

You used to be the president of the Screen Actors Guild, which is in turmoil over whether to strike. In fact, just before we spoke, the executive director resigned. Can you explain all this for the non-actor?

I'm intensely union and I'm intensely pro the leadership of the union at present. And the union has been assailed by a voted-in majority at the last election, which is working openly against the leadership of this union. I call it the perfect storm for SAG in terms of the writers' strike, which went nowhere; in terms of the directors, who took a really weak contract. AFTRA, in the meantime - they're trying to take our jurisdiction wherever they can. So we were standing alone, and while standing alone, a rebel group comes along and shows that there is gross dissatisfaction - while we begin contract negotiations - with the way the leadership is leading. And 130 moneyed actors say they don't want a strike. Now that is the crippling of a union in a way that I have never witnessed in any other union. So it is a total gift basket to management. The hue and cry is always "Now is not the time to strike." Well, there is no time to strike, as far as a union goes. The union was formed in 1937 at the height of the Depression.

You spent a decade playing a journalist, first on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and then on Lou Grant. Any thoughts on the current status of newspapers in this country?

It gets worse and worse. I find our country, my profession, everything seems to be in a true state of chaos. Leadership is absent, businesses are closing down wherever we look, newspapers are being sold and not reopened. The journalist has had a (heck) of a time, not only doing investigative reporting but being able to get it published. It's not the halcyon days.

Your character led so many people to the business.

I keep trying to tell people, don't blame me, but they won't listen.

The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial

* When and where: 7:30 p.m. Monday, Macky Auditorium, University of Colorado

* Cost: $12 to $52

* Information: 303-492-8008