by Mary Beth Dagg
“Prejudice always obscures the truth.” That’s the quote you’ll see on T-shirts at West Seattle High School and the core message of the drama they bring to the stage November 5th.
From Nov. 4-13, the high school’s Drama Club presents 12 Angry People, an hour-long adaptation of Reginald Rose’s 1954 Teleplay, 12 Angry Men. The 1957 full-length movie starring Henry Fonda fully established the story as a classic.
This provocative jury-room drama takes place on a stifling hot day in New York City in what seems to be an open-and-shut case. We are flies on the wall as a jury deliberates the fate of a minority defendant in a first-degree murder trial. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Will this group of strangers send a boy to the electric chair for murdering his father?
Andrew Finley, director and WSHS Drama chair, says, “It’s a character study. What happens to a group of 12 disparate strangers when you lock them in the room and the only way out is consensus?”
Our hero is Juror Eight, who, at first, is the sole holdout in an 11-1 guilty vote. Eight undertakes the virtually impossible mission of convincing the other jurors to deliberate the case while ignoring their own personal prejudices or biases. “Ultimately, to make the fair decision, they learn that they have remove themselves from the equation,” says Finley. For many of the jurors it’s a difficult, if not painful, process.
Not only a gripping character study, this timeless play pushes us to examine the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check. Finley adds, “In the end, this play upholds the idea of trial by jury. Only when they each stop listening to their gut and examine the evidence, do they become a true juror.”
The cast includes Taylor Schuler, Matthew Carlson, David Ramirez, Flannery Denison, Nanna Darden, Matt Bohl, Johnny Le, Kayla Swedlow, Kaily Irons-Fuda, Sterling Espinoza, Biruktawit Mengistu, Mackenzie Jennings and Margie Alamario.
“12 Angry People” runs Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 4,5,6,11,12,13 at 7:30 p.m. in the West Seattle High School auditorium at 3000 California Ave. S.W.
Tickets are $7 with reservation or $12 at the door. Call 206-252-8834 for reservations.
