Dead Man Walking playwright Tim Robbins directed the critically
acclaimed movie and wrote its screenplay. Both the play and movie are
based on Sister Helen Prejean’s best-selling book of the same name,
where she records her journey as an advisor to a death row prisoner,
taking us through her personal and spiritual evolution into both a
death penalty opponent and victims’ advocate.
Sister Helen
approached Robbins to write the play, explaining that it could be
reproduced endlessly, and everyone involved in performing it, as well
as the audience, would be brought into deeper reflection about the
death penalty. She gave him a New Yorker article about Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, which recounted that the play has been performed one million times and that on each day of the year, somewhere in the world, the play is performed.
Robbins agreed, and enlisted a selected number of schools and
universities across the United States to perform the play, and give him
feedback for an eventual Broadway run. However, reports of the amazing
power of the play to stir discussion in the local communities of the 30
schools where it was performed, convinced Tim to make the play
available to schools and non-profit theatre groups across America.
Thus, the Dead Man Walking School Theater Project was born.
There is one caveat for companies like Pisces Moon: that the play
not be produced for commercial gain, and that we align ourselves with a
school or schools in which at least two academic departments, in
addition to the drama department, provide courses related to the themes
and issues of the play. Art and/or music departments are also
encouraged to sponsor creative projects related to the play. Hence
Cabrillo College’s sponsorship and Delta School’s involvement, where
the themes and issues of the play will be introduced across the
curricula.
Cabrillo College
Cabrillo’s division of Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) will sponsor the show and be involved in collaborative efforts around classes and events. A winter intercession class will be held at Cabrillo in January 2008 and taught by Skip Epperson, Theatre Arts Department Chair and Dead Man Walking set designer. The class, which was created specifically for Dead Man Walking, is open to students of all ages, including Delta students and Pisces Moon Young Company, and will teach the management and production aspects of theater, including set building, and operating the sound and light boards. Other plans include a panel discussion about capital punishment issues and faculty workshops during flex week in January, which will introduce the issues into the curricula, and a gallery show of art and promotional materials designed by Delta students specifically for the play.
Delta Charter High School
Delta Charter High School,
which is part of the Santa Cruz City School District, will co-produce.
Delta’s principal, Mary Gaukel, and her faculty will create thematic
units as part of the school’s curricula in Drama, Social Studies, Art,
Science, Math and Literature. In the first trimester, they will examine
capital punishment by reading and discussing related literature in an
English course, “Capital Punishment, Growth and Redemption”. In Art,
they will design posters for the production and create art related to
the themes of the play. In the second trimester, they will look at the
statistics in Math, comparing costs of housing a death-row prisoners
and going through the appeals process. Forensics will be explored in
Science: how it contributes to conviction as well as exoneration. In
Literature students will study how the play evolved from page, to
screen, to stage: they will discover first the book, then the movie,
then the play.
Audition Technique and Script Analysis Class
As part of the educational component of the project, an after-school class in script analysis and audition technique will be
taught by director Susan Myer Silton and offered to Delta High School and Pisces Moon students as well as young people who have
auditioned for or performed with the Pisces Moon Young Company.
Susan Myer Silton will also teach a class in script analysis and audition technique at Delta School.
