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THE EXONERATED: Powerful Play at Pit
& Balcony Examines the Failings of the Criminal Justice System
"Justice delayed is justice denied." - William Ewart Gladstone "I have always believed that to have true justice we must have equal harassment under the law." - Paul Krassner For author, playwright, and Director Marc Beaudin, 2006 is commencing at a quick & challenging pace. Fresh from winning kudos for his original adaptation of Frankenstein with the 303 Collective, Beaudin has been tapped to direct a significant and undoubtedly controversial theatrical presentation for Pit & Balcony entitled The Exonerated, with performances slated for January 20-22 and 27-29th.
Written by Jessica Blank and
Erik Jensen, this modern and undeniably timely work chronicles the
true stories of six innocent survivors of Death Row in their own words,
cultivated through extensive research and careful editing after the
authors pored through countless courthouse record rooms for depositions,
verbatim interrogations, and testimony.
The tales of these six Death Row
survivors are then interwoven into overlapping stories that illustrate
the disturbing portrait of an American justice system gone horribly
wrong. Indeed, following its debut in New York City and Los Angeles,
The Exonerated won the 2003 Drama Desk and Outer Critics Awards,
largely due to the powerful substance of its timely subject matter.
The genesis of this project began back in
2000 when the authors attended a conference on the death penalty at
Columbia University. At that time, Governor George Ryan of
Illinois had just declared a moratorium on the death penalty in his
state, while G. W. Bush was running for high office, with more
executions carried out under his watch as governor of Texas than in any
other state since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
Out of this conference, the playwrights
traveled across the United States interviewing people about what it was
like to be wrongly convicted on Death Row. What they discovered were
people from vastly different and varied ethnic, religious, and
educational backgrounds, with views of the world that also varied
greatly.
After interviewing 40 of these
individuals on the telephone and 20 in person, six of the most poignant
stories were taken to form the core of The Exonerated.
"The people they interviewed had spent
anywhere from two to twenty-two years on Death Row," explains Marc, "and
the only common denominator between them was the fact they were
sentenced to die."
"With few exceptions, each word spoken in
the play comes from public records, letters, court transcripts and
interviews. Even the names of those exonerated are their own," notes
Beaudin.
"What you see is how one character such
as a white female yoga teacher in her 50s shares this common bond with
an African American radical & poet - each character is victimized by the
criminal justice system in different forms."
In researching the project prior to assuming his directorial duties, Beaudin explains how the experience evolved into an eye-opener regarding flaws of our criminal justice system.
"A major study conducted from 1973-1995
reviewed by a team of lawyers and criminologists led by Columbia
University law professor James Liebman examined 4,578
state cases," explains Marc. "What they found is that appellate courts
determined that 68 percent of the cases reviewed had prejudicial
errors and should be reversed. In short, two-thirds of the death
sentence cases reviewed were found to be flawed."
According to The Innocence Project,
which incorporates teams of law school students investigating cases, the
factors leading to wrongful convictions found in the first 70 DNA
exonerations consisted mainly of mistaken identities, serology
inclusion, police misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, and defective or
fraudulent science.
Apart from the power of the subject
matter, Beaudin is equally charged about the enthusiasm gendered thus
far for this project. "It's been hard to find enough people to cast
shows in this area, because there aren't a lot of people doing theatre
and willing to give up that much time to be in a play, but this show has
raised lots of interest. We had 29 people audition for 10 roles, which
is way more than I expected. And we could have cast almost everybody
that tried out."
So in approaching a project of this
nature, are there certain themes that Beaudin is seeking to bring out of
the characters in his role as Director?
"With a show like this the most important
thing is to let the characters tell their stories," he reflects. "The
more you do to be theatrical, the more you water down the impact of
their story. We have a set unit that gives us a great variety of levels,
depth, and angles, so the actors that play ensemble parts can appear
from all over the place."
"Thematically, there are lots of
interwoven stories. One actor may start telling their story, but the way
the stories build upon one another is far more powerful than any single
narrative. A reference one character may make off the top of his head
will lead to another character where you see how that idea has come to
fruition, so the metaphors work on different levels."
Is there anything that Marc learned while researching this project that surprised him?
"Well, in the past when looking at the
criminal justice system, I always knew it was corrupted and a had a lot
of flaws and a lot of racism and classism - the idea that if you were
poor you didn't get justice, and if you're rich you do. It's like
everything in a capitalist society - justice is for sale. But I never
realized it permeated things so extensively."
"For example, Sunny Jacobs is one
character whose husband was executed while she was completely cleared of
the crime. The evidence was the same for both her and her husband, and
the guy that actually committed the crimes originally plea-bargained and
made a deal and knew how to use the system."
"Four years later the actual killer wrote
a letter confessing to his crime. This was back in 1979, yet Sunny
wasn't released until 1992. But in 1990 her husband was executed. That
was the famous case where they had to pull the switch three times. I
remember people saying back then, 'Yeah, you've got to show these
murderers what they deserve to get', but then you step back and see he
was simply somebody in a situation that is the classic case of being at
the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Then you have the case of Delbert
Tibbs," continues Beaudin. "He was hitch hiking across Florida when
a rape and a murder occurred. The woman survived and said the
perpetrator was a black man, so the police stop and interview him but
realize he didn't commit the crime. His description doesn't match and he
isn't close or near the town where it occurred. They take his photo to
the woman and she clears him; but then time goes by and they don't find
the killer. You have a small town in hysterics, so pretty soon the woman
recants and says, 'Yes, this is the man that did it'. So Delbert gets
arrested and sits on Death Row with zero evidence to put him there."
"I've learned that to get exonerated from
Death Row, the evidence has to be massive," notes Marc. "What's been
happening with a lot of these exonerations is that DNA evidence finally
shows they didn't do the crime, so they get released. The Innocence
Project is spreading to different law schools, but the problem with
DNA is that not all crimes have DNA evidence left behind. Plus the cost
is so expensive. People say DNA testing is a great victory for criminal
justice, but what is really means is that the justice system is not
doing it. It's because of students, volunteers, reporters, and teachers
that people are finally winning their freedom"
"If a plane crashes, a panel convenes to
examine the causes. Was it pilot error or manufacturing error? What can
we do to fix it? But there is no agency of the judicial system saying
'Okay, what caused this person to die? Was it the judge or bad evidence?
Instead they fight every attempt to show how this person is innocent."
So has Marc gleaned any lessons from his
experience in preparing The Exonerated for the stage?
"Well, there are two ways to answer that question," he reflects. "As far as what's wrong with the system, I really think you can't have democracy and justice when you have capitalism, because you'll always have one class receiving better treatment than another. If the lawyer you hire directly determines whether you go to prison, you can hire a good lawyer or get a court assigned attorney. But when that makes the difference of whether or not you go to prison, there is no possibility you can have justice for the poor as well as the rich. But that's way beyond the scope of this play."
"If people come to see this with an open
mind and find a little bit more about what the true nature of this issue
is, that's my highest hope for the production. People aren't
automatically criminals just because they're accused of a crime. And
these people are alive today only because ordinary people decided to do
something about it."
"You often hear people say 'That person
may not have committed that exact crime, but they did something
to be there in that position," concludes Marc. "But then you look at
these stories and realize, 'No, that isn't always the case."
"This production was a huge jump for
Pit & Balcony," states Marc. "At first it surprised me they were
doing the show, but the Board is getting energized, they have great new
people involved, and obviously community theatre has a certain community
that they serve. There is always going to be a need for musical theatre
and comedies, however there is a huge demand for plays of substance. I
think its possible to do both serious drama and the musicals throughout
the course of a season. But this play will be a litmus test in a lot of
ways as to whether that is true or not."
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