Post by CCADP on Apr 7, 2006 19:49:53 GMT -5
Randall Sinner's '38 of 50' and Julie Green's 'The Last Supper' are being
shown through May 13 at the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, 201
S. College Ave.
Sinner, of Fort Collins, traveled to the capitol steps of the 38 states
that mandate the death penalty where he ripped each state's flag into
strips and reworked them into ropes and combined the ropes into a
recontextualized flag.
'The Last Supper,' by Oregon artist Julie Green, includes 234 China plates
depicting the actual last meals ordered by executed prisoners throughout
the country.
Green said while working on the exhibit she thought about the death
penalty, the victims, the crimes committed, the people executed, the large
number of minorities on death row and the margin for error in the judicial
process.
An opening reception for both shows will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday at the
museum. There also will be a gallery talk with the artists at 3 p.m.
Saturday also at the museum.
'The Exonerated' is being presented in conjunction with the following
programs:
The film, "A Thin Blue Line," will be shown at 7 p.m. Wednesday at
Nonesuch Theater, 216 Pine St. Admission is free.
Kerry Max Cook, whose story is one of those featured in 'The Exonerated,'
will speak after the play April 14 and April 15 and at 1 p.m. April 15 at
the Foothills Unitarian Church, 1815 Yorktown Ave. Information:
www.openstagetheatre.org
Discussions with the cast of 'The Exonerated' will follow performances on
April 22, April 30 and May 5.
Legal experts and activitsts will debate capital punishment with moderator
Colorado Senator Bob Bacon. Date and location to be determined.
Information: 482-2787
The film, "Juvies," will be shown at 7:30 p.m. April 26 at Nonesuch
Theater, 216 Pine St. Admission is free.
Imagine sitting on death row for 19 years for a crime you didn't commit.
Now imagine being exonerated two years after your release.
OpenStage Theatre's new production, "The Exonerated," features the true
tales of 6 wrongfully convicted people sentenced to death.
It's a story of spiritual and physical survival, director Wendy Moore said
of the show, which is making its Colorado premiere.
"It will take you on a journey and you will leave different than when you
came in," Moore said.
That journey starts with Delbert Tibbs, who spent three years on death row
for the rape of a 16-year-old white girl and the murder of her companion.
Tibbs, an African-American theological student, was convicted by an
all-white jury. After the conviction was overturned, Tibbs' former
prosecutor said the original investigation had been tainted from the
beginning and that if there was a retrial, he would appear as a witness
for Tibbs.
Writers Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen based the show on interviews with
more than 60 death row survivors. The duo narrowed it down to six stories,
each told in 1st-person monologues, as well as flashbacks set in
courtrooms and prisons.
For actor Lenny Scovel, playing a man who spent 19 years on death row for
a crime he didn't commit was emotionally-demanding, to say the least.
In 1977, Kerry Max Cook was arrested and charged for rape and murder.
He was convicted on some pretty flimsy evidence, Scovel said. The police
had a more probable suspect but they did not pursue it.
Cook was convicted in 1978 and spent the next 19 years on Texas' death
row.
During the appeals process, Cook was offered time served if he would plead
guilty. Cook refused. Eventually he was offered, and accepted, an Alford
Plea, where the defendant asserts his innocence, but admits that
sufficient evidence exists for a guilty sentence.
2 years later DNA evidence came back exonerating him of the crime and
implicating the original suspect.
For the actors, these roles are about honesty, Scovel said.
"It's any actor's job to find the honesty in whatever story you're
telling," he said. "It's especially important here. Audiences here are
going to pick up that we aren't doing any fancy theatrics. Our job is to
just be as real and honest and simple with these stories as we can."
Even though fully imagining what being so close to death is like is
impossible without first-hand experience, Scovel said he drew on instances
where he felt despair and powerless.
"One of the hardest parts of his story to tell is while he was in prison
his brother was murdered and his mother held him responsible for this," he
said. "That moment when he's talking about the relationship with his
brother and the murder and his mother holding him responsible - that
really resonated with me."
While doing research on his character, Scovel contacted Cook and has been
communicating with him for the last few months.
With a sponsorship from the Foothills Unitarian Church and its members,
OpenStage is bringing Cook to Fort Collins April 14 and 15 to speak with
audiences about his experience and his feelings on the death penalty.
The audience will come in with its own opinion on the death penalty, Moore
said. This play may change that opinion, but that's not the primary goal.
While the controversial issue is at the forefront of the play, the weight
of the show hangs on these people's stories - their lives - Moore said,
equating the experience to seeing the Vietnam Memorial, the AIDS Quilt or
the Holocaust Museum.
"Before seeing this play this issue may be very abstract and after,
suddenly it's very real and very human," she said.
Despite showing the failures of the justice system, "The Exonerated" aims
to give the audience an understanding of how justice failed many others,
not just the main characters.
"It really emphasizes the humanity of these people, all of them - the
police, the judges, the prosecutors," Moore said. "They were all caught
together, they all got up in the morning not wanting what happened to
happen."
At different stages of rehearsal, Moore said she connected with each of
the six's stories and believes audiences will do the same.
"As a mom, I connected with Sunny (Sonia Jacobs, who spent 16 years on
death row for the murder of two police officers at a highway rest stop in
1976) first," she said. "I was a high school principal and the thing in
Kerry's (monologue) about bad kids gone wrong young, I saw that a lot.
Gary was just being a farmer minding his own business. The spirituality of
David is an amazing thing. Through it all he held on to that. Delbert's
ability to look things in the eye... Robert's story has so many racial
overtones..."
"The Exonerated" celebrates the human spirit, as well as looking at the
issues, OpenStage artistic director Denise Freestone said.
This is a great drama, not a political piece, Freestone insisted.
"While we may not be changing people's minds (about the death penalty), I
hope this show causes people at least to think about this very
controversial issue and see it in real, human terms," Scovel added. "These
are real people and real experiences and as Kerry points out, this could
happen to anyone."
(source: The Coloradoan)
shown through May 13 at the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, 201
S. College Ave.
Sinner, of Fort Collins, traveled to the capitol steps of the 38 states
that mandate the death penalty where he ripped each state's flag into
strips and reworked them into ropes and combined the ropes into a
recontextualized flag.
'The Last Supper,' by Oregon artist Julie Green, includes 234 China plates
depicting the actual last meals ordered by executed prisoners throughout
the country.
Green said while working on the exhibit she thought about the death
penalty, the victims, the crimes committed, the people executed, the large
number of minorities on death row and the margin for error in the judicial
process.
An opening reception for both shows will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday at the
museum. There also will be a gallery talk with the artists at 3 p.m.
Saturday also at the museum.
'The Exonerated' is being presented in conjunction with the following
programs:
The film, "A Thin Blue Line," will be shown at 7 p.m. Wednesday at
Nonesuch Theater, 216 Pine St. Admission is free.
Kerry Max Cook, whose story is one of those featured in 'The Exonerated,'
will speak after the play April 14 and April 15 and at 1 p.m. April 15 at
the Foothills Unitarian Church, 1815 Yorktown Ave. Information:
www.openstagetheatre.org
Discussions with the cast of 'The Exonerated' will follow performances on
April 22, April 30 and May 5.
Legal experts and activitsts will debate capital punishment with moderator
Colorado Senator Bob Bacon. Date and location to be determined.
Information: 482-2787
The film, "Juvies," will be shown at 7:30 p.m. April 26 at Nonesuch
Theater, 216 Pine St. Admission is free.
Imagine sitting on death row for 19 years for a crime you didn't commit.
Now imagine being exonerated two years after your release.
OpenStage Theatre's new production, "The Exonerated," features the true
tales of 6 wrongfully convicted people sentenced to death.
It's a story of spiritual and physical survival, director Wendy Moore said
of the show, which is making its Colorado premiere.
"It will take you on a journey and you will leave different than when you
came in," Moore said.
That journey starts with Delbert Tibbs, who spent three years on death row
for the rape of a 16-year-old white girl and the murder of her companion.
Tibbs, an African-American theological student, was convicted by an
all-white jury. After the conviction was overturned, Tibbs' former
prosecutor said the original investigation had been tainted from the
beginning and that if there was a retrial, he would appear as a witness
for Tibbs.
Writers Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen based the show on interviews with
more than 60 death row survivors. The duo narrowed it down to six stories,
each told in 1st-person monologues, as well as flashbacks set in
courtrooms and prisons.
For actor Lenny Scovel, playing a man who spent 19 years on death row for
a crime he didn't commit was emotionally-demanding, to say the least.
In 1977, Kerry Max Cook was arrested and charged for rape and murder.
He was convicted on some pretty flimsy evidence, Scovel said. The police
had a more probable suspect but they did not pursue it.
Cook was convicted in 1978 and spent the next 19 years on Texas' death
row.
During the appeals process, Cook was offered time served if he would plead
guilty. Cook refused. Eventually he was offered, and accepted, an Alford
Plea, where the defendant asserts his innocence, but admits that
sufficient evidence exists for a guilty sentence.
2 years later DNA evidence came back exonerating him of the crime and
implicating the original suspect.
For the actors, these roles are about honesty, Scovel said.
"It's any actor's job to find the honesty in whatever story you're
telling," he said. "It's especially important here. Audiences here are
going to pick up that we aren't doing any fancy theatrics. Our job is to
just be as real and honest and simple with these stories as we can."
Even though fully imagining what being so close to death is like is
impossible without first-hand experience, Scovel said he drew on instances
where he felt despair and powerless.
"One of the hardest parts of his story to tell is while he was in prison
his brother was murdered and his mother held him responsible for this," he
said. "That moment when he's talking about the relationship with his
brother and the murder and his mother holding him responsible - that
really resonated with me."
While doing research on his character, Scovel contacted Cook and has been
communicating with him for the last few months.
With a sponsorship from the Foothills Unitarian Church and its members,
OpenStage is bringing Cook to Fort Collins April 14 and 15 to speak with
audiences about his experience and his feelings on the death penalty.
The audience will come in with its own opinion on the death penalty, Moore
said. This play may change that opinion, but that's not the primary goal.
While the controversial issue is at the forefront of the play, the weight
of the show hangs on these people's stories - their lives - Moore said,
equating the experience to seeing the Vietnam Memorial, the AIDS Quilt or
the Holocaust Museum.
"Before seeing this play this issue may be very abstract and after,
suddenly it's very real and very human," she said.
Despite showing the failures of the justice system, "The Exonerated" aims
to give the audience an understanding of how justice failed many others,
not just the main characters.
"It really emphasizes the humanity of these people, all of them - the
police, the judges, the prosecutors," Moore said. "They were all caught
together, they all got up in the morning not wanting what happened to
happen."
At different stages of rehearsal, Moore said she connected with each of
the six's stories and believes audiences will do the same.
"As a mom, I connected with Sunny (Sonia Jacobs, who spent 16 years on
death row for the murder of two police officers at a highway rest stop in
1976) first," she said. "I was a high school principal and the thing in
Kerry's (monologue) about bad kids gone wrong young, I saw that a lot.
Gary was just being a farmer minding his own business. The spirituality of
David is an amazing thing. Through it all he held on to that. Delbert's
ability to look things in the eye... Robert's story has so many racial
overtones..."
"The Exonerated" celebrates the human spirit, as well as looking at the
issues, OpenStage artistic director Denise Freestone said.
This is a great drama, not a political piece, Freestone insisted.
"While we may not be changing people's minds (about the death penalty), I
hope this show causes people at least to think about this very
controversial issue and see it in real, human terms," Scovel added. "These
are real people and real experiences and as Kerry points out, this could
happen to anyone."
(source: The Coloradoan)