CFCArts play puts audience in courtroom
In CFCArts’ “12 Angry Jurors,” the scene is set by history. The arts organization’s production of the drama will be staged in the restored courtroom at the Orange County Regional History Center in downtown Orlando. Director Robin Olson thinks that’s perfect.
“We can pretend” in a traditional theater, she says. “But here there’s this glorious, dark wood paneling; there’s a severity to it. When you’re sitting in a courtroom, you can feel the ‘life or death.’ In this room, it could be just that.”
In “12 Angry Jurors,” a young man’s life hangs in the balance. The testimony in his trial has just ended as the play begins, and now his “peers” are determining whether he is guilty or not guilty of murdering his father. The story has racial overtones: The defendant is Puerto Rican; the jury originally was all white — and all male.
In that original story, written for television in 1954 by Reginald Rose, the title was “12 Angry Men.” It has since been performed by mixed-gender casts as “12 Angry Jurors” and as an allfemale version titled, as you might expect, “12 Angry Women.” The show has flexibility because none of the jurors have names. Their characters are identified only by their juror number.
Olson performed in a production of “12 Angry Women” early in her career.
“Forty years later, things are a lot less black and white,” she says. “It’s not just about the color of people, it’s the way we shut people out. Some have gripes with fat people, some with gay people, some with Hispanics.”
Olson has assembled actors of varying backgrounds and traits to populate her jury. She thinks it will enhance the play’s food for thought.
She sees a fundamental part of the play as posing questions about inclusion, or as she phrases it:
“When I sit in a room of people, who do I gravitate to? Who do I form alliances with? Who do I stay away from?”
In other words, she says, “How do we decide who is in ‘our club’ and who isn’t … and why?”
Casting actors from various walks of life also adds to the verisimilitude of the play as it reflects a more contemporary society. Olson has chosen to set the play in the mid-1970s, about 20 years after the original setting. “It’s post-women’s movement, postcivil rights,” she says. “But not post-DNA testing” or other occurrences that wouldn’t make sense with the play’s plot.
Also adding to the sense of realness: Traditional stage lighting won’t be used. Everyone will sit under the regular lights of the courtroom — for better or worse.
“The audience is going to be seen as clearly as the actors,” Olson says.
Audience members can choose to sit in the room’s old jury box, which offers more comfortable seating and sight lines “that are going to be perfect,” Olson says. Actors will use the jury box and
an aisle in the audience to help immerse theatergoers in the drama.
Olson warns the room is cold — “Bring a sweater,” she says — adding to the chilling nature of the play. And there is one final piece of reality that intrudes into Rose’s fictional story: A notorious serial killer has left his mark. Or maybe not.
Carved into a table in the room is the name “Ted Bundy” — the man who admitted to killing 30 women in seven states in the 1970s. Historians are skeptical that Bundy actually left the autograph himself — he was tried in a separate building that has since been razed — but just seeing the real-life memento of crime and punishment made Olson shiver.
“I’ve gotten over it now,” she says. “But, it did creep me out.”