Now the subject of an award-winning documentary film, The Innocents is social justice advocacy through performance art. The work is an effort to delve deeply into the current issues surrounding the subject of wrongful imprisonment and exoneration, as well as a commitment to connect with the communities in which it is performed. We have embraced our role as advocates through the realization that our work cuts to the emotional core of the human experience surrounding these issues.
Using a variety of found-object and home-made instruments, electronic soundscapes, and spoken texts, we have devised a one-hour dramatic soundscape comprised of at least seventeen tableaus which explore aspects of the issues surrounding wrongful imprisonment and exoneration in the American criminal justice system: mistaken identity, JOHN LANE and ALLEN OTTE FILM TRAILER is HERE.
WEBSITE: www.the-innocents.com
“…spare, poignant drama…” - Tom Keogh, The Seattle Times
“As an exonerate myself, it was more impactful than I could have imagined. Seeing it, feeling it was everything.” - Anna Vasquez, Director of Outreach and Education, Innocence Project of Texas incarceration, injustice, politics, psychology, and resilience.
The texts spoken in the work are derived from a variety of sources: various historic prison diaries/poetry, interrogation transcripts, Google autocomplete, Thomas Jefferson, Jax (a female prisoner in the Oklahoma State Prison system), Mark Godsey (former NY prosecutor, author of Blind Injustice), captured Chicago police scan chatter, among many other sources. Some of the pieces are meant to be uncomfortable – a bit too long, momentarily chaotic and confusing, difficult to understand, provocative. Others are simple and direct: melodic and in familiar genres, lyrics recited to percussive accompaniment. Working on an emotional level, our idea is to shine a light on this subject —as if through a prism—in hopes that various aspects surrounding it may briefly come into focus for each of us.
Art provides a platform for advocacy, affords us an opportunity to raise our voices in the name of something other than ourselves in an eloquent and hopefully memorable way. In the current socio-political landscape where we are confronted with the most egregious examples of the opposite, our offering wishes to prove the power of empathic engagement with issues that ultimately touch all of our lives.
Learn more about Portland State University's School of Music and Theater