The Exonerated

By Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen

First performed in 2002

Exoneration – When a person is convicted of a crime and is later proved to be innocent of that crime (Wikipedia)

The play The Exonerated is about 6 people who were on death row, convicted of crimes and murders they did not commit. They were all eventually proven innocent of their convictions. This play tells their stories of being blamed for crimes they didn’t commit, their trials and questioning, life in prison and death row, and their lives after being in prison for so long and adjusting back to normal life.

All the characters and their stories are based off of true interview with people who have been exonerated.

1.     I think this play’s most prominent use of contemporary theatrical styles is that it is very realistic because it is based on real people and real stories. Even the characters are based off of the people’s names

Non-linear theatre- Jumps between characters and their different scenes, times and voices.

Macaronic (?) – Most characters in this play experience racism, and it is the authorities’ ignorance towards race, especially African Americans, that causes the characters to be convicted in the first place.

Bricolage – This play is written off of facts gathered in legal archives and off of interviews with these exonerated people

2.     Expressionism – recreation of what the characters were feeling through their experiences.

Re contextualism – Although all the main characters narrate their own stories, the central narrator of the play, who provides transitions between different character and scenes using poetry, also has his own story of being convicted for rape and murder.

3.     The playwright is anything but not alive. The whole purpose of this play is to shine light on the suffering that these wrongly convicted had to live through. None of this play is written from the playwright’s point of view. It is all written from the point of view of those that the playwright interviewed.

4.     I think that at this play is more connected to its society. It reflects the injustice of the American justice system, it’s corruption and just how much the authority bend truths and facts to make these innocent people seem guilty. It shows the disregard the powerful have for the powerless.

5.     I imagined this play almost exactly as how it is written in the script because honestly I think it is the best way to present this play. I imagined there being three chairs on stage (right, middle, left) where the different speaking narrators sat, spotlighted on their turns, with everything around them blacked out. I think it emphasizes the feeling of loneliness and need for freedom or love or something that is reoccurring throughout the whole play by all the characters. I also think this play should be really personal so I would probably have it set in a closed space. Perhaps have the audience sit on the stage circling the performance area (like random acts did 2 years ago on the lyso stage)