Exonerated ps [Jenna]

I can't remember if we mentioned this in class or not, but a 10th anniversary production of The Exonerated is currently in preview Off Broadway. It opens September 19th. Here's a link to an article about the production

 http://www.playbill.com/news/article/170022-Culture-Projects-Starry-Exonerated-Anniversary-Production-Begins-Limited-Run-Sept-15#.UFS3B63Hnac.facebook

and here is a link to the play's website. (Students tickets are available for $30.)
http://cultureproject.org/current/exonerated/

Both links reveal all of the various celebrities who are scheduled to rotate in and out of the six exonerated roles (Brian Dennehy is one of the more recognizable names), but also state that, "Exoneree Sunny Jacobs, whose story is shared within the play, joins the cast for one week, Sept. 25-30." Casting Sunny as, I am assuming, herself complicates the discussion we've been having about sincerity, celebrity, and empathy, as well as the differences between documentary film, theatre, and docudrama. Would including Sunny privilege her story over those of the five other exonerates whose stories would be performed by celebrity actors? Would her performance seem more sincere than the others? The play is already constructed to portray Sunny's story as one of the most empathetic and actually seeing her character embodied by the actual Sunny would only increase the level of empathy created within the audience. I'm not sure an excess of empathy is useful for this play. The play is so carefully crafted to best use sincerity that disturbing the balance might increase its theatricality in a way that exposes the mechanics of the play's project.

Additionally, with the exception of one of Delbert's choric moments, The Exonerated ends with Sunny's following monologue:

“I want to be a living memorial. When I die, I want ‘em to plant tomatoes on me, or apple trees or something, so that I can still be a part of things. And while I'm still alive, I’m planting my seeds everywhere I go, so that they’ll say, ‘I once heard this woman, and she didn’t let them stop her, and she didn’t get crushed, and if that little woman person can do it, then I can do it.’ And that’s my revenge. That’s my legacy, and my memorial.” (75-76)

I'm wondering if Sunny performing as Sunny would trap the play into becoming a Sunny memorial. To allude to Ming and Courtney's comments in class, might Sunny's performance as herself alter empathy in the audience so that instead of leaving the theatre wanting to combat the death penalty, you might leave the theatre wanting to give Sunny a long hug and a hefty donation check?

Course Blogs 4 & 5

 As you may well know, I have been very sick and foggy minded in the last week and a half. I decided to clump these two posts together so I could get them to you all as fast as I could, though I still think I'm late! Everyone else said such engaging things on our readings, though, so I don't think anyone was at a loss for my input.

Since this is extra long, I've put it under a cut

Response to the Bloggers of Prompt 5

The blog posts were highly engaging, and I’m writing one post to react to them in general, because I saw several connections between them. Regarding sincerity, Jenna draws our attention to the title, suggesting that the audience knows ahead of time that the characters have been dealt an injustice, and the audience is already primed to believe in the characters’ innocence, and thereby judge their words sincere. Audience predisposition indeed seems an important factor. Just as important is the audience’s reaction to the performance itself. Ming, Justin, and Jennifer each pointed to the importance of the telling of the stories, rather than the over-emotionalized recreation or re-living of the events, as essential to the creation of a sense of sincerity within the performance of the play. I felt the same way—that it’s best to just tell the story rather than preach at the audience. Just as Blank and Jensen write “trust the stories” (xvi), I would add trust the audience.

Ming wrote of her reaction to the focus on the dialogue, which showed us that things weren’t fair, thus eliciting an emotional response in her. Justin also wrote about how the play focuses on dialogue, referring to the way Blank and Jensen pointedly do not follow Dawson’s Unity of Piscatorian Stage Devices, suggesting that to cover the stage with realia would have been cliché and resulted in a weakening of the authenticity of the play. I agree—the use of such realia would seem too self-conscious and detract from the story. It might even seem like the director was trying too hard to convince the audience that the stories were real, thus making the audience doubt the “truth” of the performance. The sparse set allows the audience to focus more on the words, the stories of the characters themselves. The audience can see the contradictions and the hypocrisy become apparent through the simplicity; the simplicity enhances the sense of sincerity. The dissonance between what we’re taught about how the system works and the way the system is shown to actually work is thus all the more powerful—especially when this gap is exploited by Rhodes to harm Sunny and Jesse (36). The audience also sees the dissonance they are feeling played out on stage in the characters who trust the system and are betrayed by it, such as Gary (30-31) and Sunny (43). It’s also felt when David’s prosecutor lies (44). The sense of sincerity felt by the audience does indeed contribute to the feeling that what they see is the truth. I’m not sure if Jennifer is equating the two when she writes “sincere/True” in her post, but I can see her point that the play’s simple telling of these six stories, because they are mediated and crafted, is not so different from Herzog manipulating facts to lead an audience to a realization of larger Truths. I’m not sure about the role of humor in creating this effect, but I do like Jennifer’s use of the phrase “dramatic testimony” to describe the play.

Would celebrity actors cause the “dramatic testimony” to feel less sincere? Would celebrity actors make it easier for spectators to “lose [their] sense of these characters as real people”, as Andrea asks? Would celebrity actors be distracting or would using them provide the distance necessary for theatricality? As Jennifer suggests in her post, I think it would draw the audience’s attention to the fact that it’s a set of stories being told to them second hand by actors. Rather than interpreting this as “an unproductive or unpurposeful phenomenological rupture,” as Justin posits in his post, I suggest the opposite: that the recognition of the celebrity would be beneficial because it would prevent the audience from slipping into the error of conflating the actor with the character—and it would thereby create the space necessary for the audience to engage in the process of theatricality. Here’s where the issue of trusting the audience comes up again. Create the conditions for theatricality and trust the audience to make meaning.

This brings us finally to the question of the role of theater, something that Ming deals with in her post. She questions whether people go to the theater “to take part in moral decisions,” asking “why is the best thing about theater a discussion about right and wrong?” She wonders whether this is because theaters are nominally secular cultural sites, in contrast to religious houses of worship such as churches, which therefore allow an audience more freedom to both have a moral reaction and to “consider the reasons why”—and I would add, for themselves. This seems reasonable. From a Marxist perspective, houses of worship seem like they can easily be places where ideological dogma is received uncritically by an already-receptive audience (this is not necessarily the case in reality), whereas a theater is potentially freer of such a dynamic (ideology is present in theater, too), thereby allowing more room for alternatives in terms of what is being presented (no dogma dictates what the priest preaches, or even whether there needs to be any preaching!), and also more room for interpretation, decision-making, and meaning-making by the critically-aware spectator observing the theatricality unfolding before them.

Course Blog 5, The Exonerated, Jenna

Sincerity. According to our friend, the OED, sincerity is defined in the following way.

sincerity, n.

The character, quality, or state of being sincere.

1a.Freedom from falsification, adulteration, or alloy; purity, correctness

1b. Genuineness (of a passage)

2a. Freedom from dissimulation or duplicity; honesty, straightforwardness.

2b. Of feelings: Genuineness

2c. pl. Sincere feelings or actions

<http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.lib.indiana.edu/view/Entry/180056?redirectedFrom=sincerity&>

In this definition, the word “genuineness” is used twice, as is the word “feelings.” In viewing sincerity through a theatrical lens, these two words are appropriate ones to ascribe to sincerity and how sincerity may be crafted on stage—through the genuineness of feelings. Of course, assessing a play through the genuineness of its feelings assumes that there must be a judgment system in its audience through which feelings may or may not be perceived as genuine. I might propose that this judgment system is one of empathy, but I'm not sure that all moments of sincerity in The Exonerated are necessarily empathetic ones. Perhaps empathy is only a factor in this nebulous judgment system through which we intrinsically feel whether something is genuine or not.

After reading the introduction and notes on the performance of the play, it is evident that Blank and Jensen's project is one of sincerity. Through those two introductory sections to the play, the playwrights create the system through which we decide whether or not sentiment is sincere. This is done rather easily and ingenuously through the play's title and its introductory text. The characters are exonerated. Before the play begins, we are already aware of their innocence. Innocence then becomes the concept through which we may ascribe the genuineness of the play's feeling. We are told that, regardless of acting style, the performers usually channel the actual mannerisms and other characteristics of the six exonerated people. Blank and Jensen write, “It [actors unintentionally channeling the people they are playing] happens involuntarily and has nothing to do with mimicry or impersonation. It's all in the words, and in the stories” (xvii). Blank and Jensen present this play as a phenomenon. Because its dialogue comes almost exclusively from public documents and interviews, actors, seemingly inevitably, become vehicles of delivering the reality of the feeling behind the public statements made about the various murder cases presented in the play. Because the words are “true” Blank and Jensen invest them with magical qualities. Before the play even begins, these two playwrights manipulate us toward believing in the genuineness of feeling invested in the dialogue.

When reading the play, I found one of the most sincere moments on page 32 during Gary's tale of his “vision statement.” Near the middle of this story, when discussing investigators used the vision statement as a confession of how he might have killed his mother, Gary has the following line.

“Gary: [beat] I never would have hurt her.”

It is difficult to parse through exactly why this line has so much impact because it is tied into systems of feeling that I don't quite cognitively understand. Why do I judge the line to be genuine? I feel it to be true, but how does that feeling create belief? How exactly is this line using sincerity to create knowledge of innocence? I, alas, know little of the mechanisms of the brain. It may be, because I have been aware of Gary's innocence since the beginning of the play, that this line, strategically positioned against the incomprehension of Gary's investigators, makes me feel outraged that they cannot see the truth in front of their faces. In the presence of their disbelief, my belief becomes stronger. In its simplicity, Gary's line is incredibly powerful. It is only seven words and a beat, and yet underlines the emotional injustice intrinsic in The Exonerated's project. The mechanics of such emotional manipulation force one of the questions of the play—how could such apparently innocent people ever have been convicted of and almost killed for murders we know (or perhaps feel) they did not commit?