About the Play:

The Exonerated has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues.

The Exonerated is a full-length docudrama by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen. What effect does it have on a person – a soul, a life – to have freedom and self-respect stripped away and then, ostensibly, returned years later after decades of incarceration? The Exonerated attempts to answer this question through the words of six innocent men and women who, after years in jail, emerged from death row to try to reclaim what was left of their lives.

The Exonerated tells the true stories of six wrongfully convicted survivors of death row in their own words. Culled from interviews, letters, transcripts, case files and the public record, we meet Kerry, a sensitive Texan brutalized on death row for twenty-two years before being exonerated by DNA evidence; we meet Gary, a Midwestern organic farmer condemned for the murder of his own parents and later exonerated when two motorcycle-gang members confess. We meet Robert, an African-American horse groomer who spent seven years on death row for the murder of a white woman before evidence emerges that the victim was found clutching hair from a Caucasian attacker. We hear from David, a shy man with aspirations to the ministry, bullied into confessing at eighteen to a robbery/murder he had nothing to do with, scarred from a youth spent in prison and struggling to regain his faith; and from Sunny, a bright-spirited hippie who, along with her husband, spent seventeen years in prison for the murder of two police officers – while another man confessed and was ignored by the courts. And we meet Delbert, a poet who serves as the play's center, convicted of a rape/murder in the Deep South of the 1970s and later freed when evidence surfaced showing that he was not even in the town when the crime occurred. Most describe losing their faith in the justice system, while discovering that it was the resources available to a defense team that made the difference between achieving justice or experiencing a miscarriage of it. Moving between first-person monologues and scenes set in courtrooms and prisons, the six interwoven stories paint a picture of an American criminal justice system gone horribly wrong – and of six brave souls who persevered to survive it.

The Exonerated premiered in 2002 at The Actor's Gang in Los Angeles, opened later that year at 45 Blecker Theater and ran Off Broadway in New York City for nearly two years. It received critical acclaim and won 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." The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 7 male

What people say:

"The #1 play of the year…intense and deeply affecting…." — The New York Times

"Riveting. Simple, honest storytelling that demands reflection." — Associated Press

"An artful and moving evening of documentary theater ... The play is on the one hand a devastating memorial to injustice but it also pays handsome tribute to the resilience of human hearts and minds." — Variety

"Stark… riveting… cunningly orchestrated." — The New Yorker

"Both compelling and deeply moving... This documentary-style presentation relating the true stories of people exonerated of their crimes while serving on death row is a riveting theatrical experience." — Hollywood Reporter

"[A]stark, spellbinding play [and] a profoundly moving excursion through the cracks in the justice system." — Washington Post

"The Exonerated is one of the most viscerally moving nights in the theater I have ever experienced." — Backstage

About the Playwright:

Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen are actors as well as playwrights and directors. Together, the husband-and-wife writing team are the authors of The Exonerated, a play based on interviews they conducted with over forty wrongfully convicted death-row inmates across the United States.