The following is excerpted from the Introduction and note to producers in the script of The Exonerated and is in the authors’ words:
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Over the summer of 2000, we traveled across the United States, sat in people’s living rooms and listened as they told us what it was like to be wrongly convicted and on death row. They were from vastly different ethnic, religious and educational backgrounds. Their views on the world varied greatly. The only thing they held in common was that they had each been sentenced to die, spent anywhere from two to twenty-two years years on death row, had subsequently had their convictions reversed and been freed by the state. We interviewed forty people on the phone and twenty in person. Six of these interviews form the core of The Exonerated.
[The] initial version of the play … consisted of the stories of twelve exonerated people, taken entirely from the interviews we had conducted. After three readings at The Culture Project and a performance at the United Nations, … it was clear … how the exonerated people felt about what had happened to them; what was still unclear was how it could’ve happened in the first place. So we went through the extremely difficult process of paring down the number of stories in the play, in order to tell each one more fully. Additionally, we dug into the court transcripts and case files of the people whose stories we were telling. …With a few exceptions, each word spoken in this play comes from the public record … or from an interview with an exonerated person. The names of the exonerated people are their own; some names of auxiliary characters have been changed for legal reasons.
[T]here is no automatic restitution for the wrongfully convicted upon their release from prison; further, in most states, they are forbidden to sue. Further, it is enormously difficult to convince employers to hire someone just released from prison, even when that individual was imprisoned for a crime that evidence shows he or she didn’t commit. There are virtually no resources in place to assist the wrongfully convicted in their transitions back into society; the vast majority reenter a world where it is nearly impossible for them to make a living.
Since the play first opened, we have raised a considerable amount of money for the real-life exonerated. They share in the profits from the production...; but perhaps more importantly, they receive donations from individual audience members who have heard and been touched by their stories.
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Out of the Box Theatre Company invites our audience members to make a donation to The Culture Project, the play’s original producer, which distributes all collected funds among the real-life exonerated. As you leave, you will see a collections box where you may leave your donation, which OotB will forward to The Culture Project. Checks should be made out to The Exonerated Fund. You may also send your check to The Culture Project, 85 Delancey St #201, New York, NY 10002 or donate at: www.cultureproject.org/donate.
