COUNT:

After the performances of Serving Life on Death Row, we returned to the table with a new question, how to expand the audience? How might we share a more accurate view of our current state of incarceration so that audiences would not only understand but care?

We needed to connect the dots with the school-to-prison pipeline, mental illness, racism, poverty, jury bias, and police and prosecutorial misconduct. The work needed to shed light on how these factors contribute to our current state of mass incarceration. To the sad truth that we incarcerate a larger percentage of our population than any other country in the world. To the startling reality that we have more than 5 million children growing up with at least one of their parents behind bars. Double that number when you add parents on probation or parole.

Ten million children with justice-involved parents.

Often, we imagine those on death row are the “worst of the worst.” Yet only 1% of murders in the US have resulted in a death sentence. Are those living on death row really the “worst,” or are they simply those with the “worst” contributing factors: The least competent lawyers, the lowest income levels, the most aggressive DAs, and the darkest skin color?

We were already working on a traveling exhibit and several story cycles for public readings, Right Here, Right Now. What else might we create to help a broad public understand reality on the ground?

The men were clear that if we really wanted to change outcomes, we needed to reach those with “a voice and a vote.” With that in mind, we began creating a new full-length play that would bring audiences into the felt reality of these lives and the system that surrounded them. We invited stories from more men. We wrote. And wrote. And cut and cut. Until we had a version of COUNT ready for a staged reading.

In 2017, COUNT: Stories from America’s Death Row premiered at PlayMakers Repertory Company, with an extraordinary team of 30 artists, designers, and production staff. The six characters are fictional, but all the stories they tell are true.

We didn’t know what to expect. The title was explicit. Would anyone come?

Every performance sold out, breaking box office records and testifying to a profound communal desire to understand the lives our society/culture has chosen to obscure. We offered a panel-audience conversation after every performance, including “Civil Litigation, Civil Rights, and Public Policy,” “Documentary Work and Artistic Process,” “Faith and Incarceration,” and “Restorative Justice.” An estimated 85% of the audience members stayed! Audiences wanted more: more connection, more information, more opportunities to engage.

As it turned out, COUNT: Stories from America’s Death Row was not the end but only another step along our journey.