Dead Man Walking
By Tim Robbins
Based on the book Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean
Directed by Mickey Handwerger
With Jacob Bizzell, Dina Colvin, Jim Gallagher, Richard McGraw, Heather Quinn, Niji Ramunas, Dylan Roche, Kathleen Ruttum, Sue Struve, Michael Sullivan, VerShaun Terry, Santos Ventura
Set and Light Design by Rob Berry
Produced in Cooperation with Anne Arundel Community College and the Moonlight Troupers

Sponsored by the AACC Cultural Events committee and the AACC Institute for Criminal Justice, Legal Studies and Public Service with Moonlight Troupers and Dignity Players, Dead Man Walking is based on the award-winning book -- and movie -- by the same name by Sister Helen Prejean, a spiritual counselor in the Louisiana state penitentiary system in 1983-84. A compilation piece drawing together the life stories of two Louisiana death row inmates, Dead Man Walking has a socially conscious message meant to widen the circle of public discussion on the death penalty, its consequences and its ramifications.

Director's Notes

“The death penalty, it’s nothing new. Been around for centuries,” says Hilton Barber during in Dead Man Walking. So ingrained in our culture and justice system is it that we rarely stop to really think about it, to consider whether or not we are really protecting our citizens by “imitating the very violence we seek to eliminate.” I myself didn’t think much about it until I directed The Exonerated for Dignity Players last year. The true stories of 6 exonerated death row inmates opened my eyes to a legal system bent on deterring violent crime by all means. The hypocrisy in this policy is glaring. On the one hand, we single out countries for human rights violations all over the world, while continuing to execute our own citizens in the name of justice.

Hypocrisy is at the root of Tim Robbin’s Dead Man Walking. Sister Helen Prejean, a catholic nun from Louisiana, comes face to face with it everywhere she turns; the Governor who won’t commute a death penalty conviction without “clear evidence of innocence or gross miscarriage of justice,” the prison warden who is “absolved of personal responsibility because he is doing his job,” the executioners who carry out an execution “at midnight, far away, unseen, removed from the public view,” and the prison chaplain who fails to embrace the teachings of love, reconciliation, and forgiveness upon which his very religion is based. Through the story of Matthew Poncelet and his execution, Tim Robbins and Sister Helen Prejean join hands to shed light on this hypocrisy and force us to question our own actions, our own words, and our own beliefs.

REVIEWS
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Dead Man Walking
Reviewed by Dick Wilson/Bay Times Weekly

Let me start out by decalring that I make no argument here either for or against the death penalty. I make this disclaimer because I'm writing here about a play, Dead Man Walking, most definitely on the anti-death penalty side. Capital punishment is one of those issues which has no middle ground; everyone in American society seems to be either solidly pro or definitely con, and if this review appears to be clanted one way or the other the Bay Weekly editor will surely be deluged with letters of outrage.

As well as presenting well-reasoned arguments against the death penalty, the play presents opposing arguments, through the voices of the murder victims' family members. No amount of argument is likely to make us - or the play's protagonists - change our minds. Still, this is a play to provoke self- searching and reflection.

In the fine production by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis' Dignity Players and Anne Arundel Community College's Moonlight Troupers, Jim Gallagher plays Matthew Poncelet, who sits on death row in the Angola, Louisiana prison. Poncelet was present at the murder of a young man and a young woman, although he claims he did not pull the trigger. The shooter, according to Poncelet, was his partner, who had turned state's evidence and thus avoided the death penalty. Poncelet is alone on death row.

Sister Helen Prejean (Kathleen Ruttum), a Catholid nun, agrees to be Poncelet's spiritual advisor. In so doing, she becomes immersed in the bleak, impersonal realities of the administration of capital punishment. Prejean spends hours and days in discussion with Poncelet, who is at first brash, arrogant and unrepentant. But the veneer of toughness eventually frays, and she begins to see him as the terrified creature he is. More importantly for the story, she is exposed to the eerie, implacable coldeness of the system. She sees the hypocisy of the system's elements: the prison chaplain, who shows little compassion toward the man about to be executed: the prison staff, who all take a small part, all "doing their jobs," but all refuse to accept responsibility for the prisoner's death.

The execution will take place "at midnight, far away, unseen." The oft-quoted Biblical dictum an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is evoked by the victims' families. But it's not the Bible that drives them. They want revenge.

The storyline is predictable, but the subtleties in the details give this play its impact. Marvelous acting, especially by Kathleen Ruttum, keeps the emotional tension at a high level from beginning to end. Ruttum becomes the emotionally exhausted woman she portrays, devastated by her inability to help the condemned man, even to have a reasonable conversation on the subject with anyone else. She is as isolated as the prisoner.

The play is really about reconcilliation. Prejean must reconcile the opposing views of the victims' families and the condemned man. Poncelet, for his part, must come to terms with the reality of what he's done and accept responsibility for his actions. As the prisoner, Gallagher convincingly displays the toughness of the human spirit; he's the man who has no real hope, but he hopes anyway.

The performance and staging are faultless. All the action takes place in the claustrophobic vicinity of the prisoner's cell. Meanwhile, statistical facts about the criminal justice system are displayed on a screen behind the stage. One sees, for example, that if you're poor, you're much more likely to be executed than someone who is not poor. Minorities are executed far more than whites, for identical crimes. The death penalty is administered arbitrarily; it's often a matter of sheer happenstance that someone is sentenced to death instead of imprisoned for life. So much for fairness. Finally, the numbers of people exonerated by DNA analysis makes us wonder if we've ever executed anyone who is innocent.

Whichever side you're on, this play is bound to move you. You'll leave the theater with a better understanding of the arguments, both pro and con. You'll also leave with an appreciation for the effort that Dignity Players and the Moonlight Troupers invested in this excellent production.