The Exonerated 2012

2012 marks the 10th anniversary of Culture Project’s New York premiere of The Exonerated, a ground breaking dramatization of the real-life stories of six individuals who were sentenced to death and later freed amidst overwhelming evidence of their innocence.  It is a powerful play culled from interviews, letters, transcripts, case files and court records of individuals on death row.  As timely as ever, The Exonerated is once again poised to increase visibility and to create a sense of urgency as part of a rising movement to restore justice to a system that has shown itself time and again to be deeply flawed.  Since 1989, when the first DNA exoneration took place, an additional 292 post-conviction DNA exonerations have been won in 36 states.

 

The Exonerated premiered at Culture Project in October 2002 when it received critical acclaim and ran for over 600 performances.  The New York Times declared, “How often do you feel that what you are seeing is a matter of life and death?  Here we see six people who served hard, cruel time on death row before evidence proved them innocent.  The stage is courtroom and living room; these people are intrusting their lives to us.  Their stories intersect, but the differences between them strengthen the awful likeness that justice imposes when it is blind and deaf.”

 

The Exonerated received the Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Ovation, Fringe First and Herald Angel Awards, and was nominated for the Hull-Warriner Award and the John Gassner Playwriting Award.  It also received awards from Amnesty International, the American Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Death Penalty Focus, and Court TV, and was listed by the New York Times as "The Number 1 Play of 2002."  It has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese, and was made into an award-winning movie for Court TV adapted by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen , starring Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover, Brian Dennehy, Aidan Quinn and Delroy Lindo.