Not guilty on death row
''Is art simply for aesthetic purposes or is it also to provoke people or incite them to action?" asked Kathleen Sills, who is directing ''The Exonerated" at Merrimack College this weekend.
The 90-minute show, written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, examines the true stories of six death-row survivors who were eventually exonerated. The performance includes 10 actors playing the parts of inmates and the people involved in their cases.
Cast members are Merrimack students Jim Stalley, Bill Stiles, and Katie Chuber; the Rev. Rick Piatt, the director of campus ministry at Merrimack College, who plays death-row inmate Gary Gauger; and Boston area semiprofessional actors Carl Schwaber, Mary Shapiro, Vincent Sieders, Darius Omar Williams, Michael Nurse, and Jackie Davis.
''What I find incredibly interesting about 'The Exonerated' is that it gives audience members, in the context of theater, a way to really get to know someone," said Piatt. ''The documentary style strips away everything that is nonessential."
To learn about the lives of wrongly convicted death-row survivors, the playwrights initially interviewed over 60 people. The number was winnowed to 12, and then to the chosen six. After the interviews, Blank and Jensen looked through affidavits, depositions, case files, and courtroom testimony to write the play.
''Along with their words, it is intercut with the actual moments during trials and depositions," said Sills. ''They are dramatic stories."
Sills and Piatt hope that the dramatic accounts and opportunities to put a real-life face on prisoners on death row will spur dialogue and debate about the death penalty from people on both sides of the issue.
''Do we need to have the death penalty in the US, given all we know about science and psychology?" asked Piatt. ''We as a nation need to come together and decide who we need to be as a people."
''We have a tendency to, when a heinous crime has been committed, seek quick justice and an immediate end to the threat to society, which is understandable, but we need to look at how we do this and ask whether we're creating a worse problem," said Piatt. ''Some people will walk out and still support the death penalty but some people will walk out and might change their minds."
The play is a springboard for two other events focusing on social justice at the school.
A free exhibit in the gallery of the McQuade Center for the Arts called ''The Disappeared and the Rest of Us," looks at people who have disappeared from society. The exhibit will run from Monday through March 31.
A panel discussion, to be held March 6 from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in Cascia Hall at Merrimack College, will examine issues of social justice brought forward by the play.
Open to the public, the panel will feature Sills, the assistant director of fine arts at the college; Gerald Matross from the philosophy department; Steven Theberge from the chemistry department; and the Rev. Gary McCloskey, dean of the college.
CJ Cravaro, a professor at Northern Essex Community College whose specialty is criminology; Kathy McLaurin, a visual artist who runs the Essex Art Center and focuses on social justice art; and Bruce Bradley-Gilbert, a therapist who works with prison populations, will help lead the discussion.
''It is not just the death penalty but all the issues involved in the criminal justice system," said Sills. ''I hope that it provokes a new sense of awareness and causes people to question their previously held beliefs about the criminal justice system."
DONNA NOVA K 
