'The Exonorated' Explores Death Penalty

Imagine your family, the jobs you’ve had, all of the friendships and relationships that have come and gone in the last 20 years. Now imagine that chunk of your life being ripped away from you for something that you did not do.

For many unfortunate individuals, this was a horrifyingly true situation. Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank’s “The Exonerated”—which is making its Harvard debut this weekend—follows the experiences of six people convicted of crimes they did not commit, only to be released years, even decades, later—after their lives have already been irreparably damaged by their time in prison.

“The Exonerated,” which has garnered various awards since its premiere in 2002, will be performed by BlackCAST in the Adams Pool Theatre through Sunday. Co-directed by Renee Michelle Ragin ’10 and Jenne B. Ayers ’10, “The Exonerated” explores real, personal stories.

“This play is less about the death penalty and more about the human experience. People shouldn’t be coming in tense and worried about having an opinion,” says Ragin.

Each of the six individuals’ stories contains similar, overlapping themes—such as hope and redemption in the midst of such a trying ordeal—and their individual narratives are knit together in vignettes that follow their respective arrests, interrogation, incarceration, and eventual exoneration. The theatrical presentation of these paralleled stories questions the presence of justice in the American legal system, while also delving into meaningful moral issues in a more personal and accessible way.

“The more I think about the play, the more I realize it has a lot of things to do with perceptions of people—how negative perceptions or stereotypes can lead to horrible things,” Ayers says. “That kind of issue should not be visited on a superficial level.”

The Adams Pool Theatre creates a close environment in which to relate people’s personal stories in a deep and effective way. Using spotlights to focus on the character who is speaking at the time, “The Exonerated” is performed simply yet profoundly in this antiqutated theater that the staff decided would be perfect for the atmosphere it exudes.

“We wanted to use the Adams Pool Theatre, because it is an intimate space. We wanted the audience to feel the essence of the story,” says Odelia S. Younge ’11, one of the producers for the show. “It’s such a simple production; it’s really all in the words of the script. The stories speak for themselves. The play has a lot of power in that it is so simple.”

Constructed from real interviews, case files, and public records, “The Exonerated” clearly explores the appalling consequences of false accusation. It appeals to a variety of emotions as diverse as the cast itself, balancing both grief and humor in the plot.

“Even though it is a touching play that even moves me to tears in certain parts, it’s not intended to depress or have you come away with a particular thought about the penal system,” Ragin says. “There is a huge range of emotions in the play.”

“The more rehearsals we do, we see humor come alive in places that you wouldn’t expect. It doesn’t feel stagnant—we try to reinterpret the monologues,” Ayers adds. “We even tried to say a certain word with different inflections, and even those slight changes made a huge change.”

The main objective of “The Exonerated” is to reach beyond the confines of fictional drama and tell more than just a story. The work strives to provoke critical thought about the death penalty and its ramifications, issues that are pertinent to present-day U.S., one of the several western countries still using capital punishment as a form of retributive justice.

“This is a story of how the legal system can get it wrong sometimes, and this is the worst case scenario of how innocent people became damaged because of their time in jail,” Younge says. “As college kids on campus, we should be aware of these issues, even if they don’t specifically relate to us.”

The cast and actors of the play hope to use the power of their production to make students fully aware of these difficult issues.

“If [‘The Exonerated’] just feels like a play after you see it, we haven’t done our job,” says Ragin. “This is a real issue that affected real people. It is an artistic representation of something that is real. Next time an article or something on this comes out, we hope people are looking at the issue in a deeper way.”