For the XONR8 Theatre project we got into groups of 3-4 students and we would be writing and performing in verbatim plays. A verbatim play is a play that uses only lines from an actual interview, so what a person said, verbatim. The subjects for our play would be interviews with people involved in crime, punishment and innocence. We would be performing our plays at our Winter Exhibition but also at the Onstage Playhouse in Chula Vista.
The subject of our interview was Marilyn Mulero a woman who is currently in prison presumably wrongfully so. Her unjust conviction is what lead Justin Brooks to found the California Innocence Project. We actually got a chance to interview Justin Brooks, the founder of the California Innocence Project, that was pretty cool. I'm also really happy that he showed up to our performances. We interviewed him about Marilyn Mulero and what happened that got her convicted, and just about all the information on the case.The interview we conducted was pretty long so naturally it took quite a while to transcribe it and to map it out. Our first step was to make an interview map which meant that we had to listen through the whole interview again and write down everything that Justin Brooks is talking about. So let me give an example, if somebody talks for 1 minute about how to cook steak in an interview you'd write x:xx-x:xx "John talks about how to cook steak". That way you know what's going on and when. This was really helpful since it really helped us get an idea of what we should include and how much what we want to include would last. That helped for timing reasons. Afterwards we had to transcribe the interview, that's just writing down everything that is said during the recording. The play really have to match the interview chronologically, the only requirement was that our play's every line be something that was actually said. First we had to make our individual script outlines. We had to take lines from the interview and just sort of stuff them together ourselves while also taking down notes of where we think lines should go and what we should and shouldn't include into our play. It was just like a kind of an individual brain storm that also involved making a rough draft of our rough draft. So of course the first draft of our script made together was a mess that went way over the time limit for our play and was a jumble of everyone's idea's but it was our first draft so that was okay, revision was the next obvious step.We cut out whole segments and moved others around. We also had to slightly change some of the lines to make them make more sense. Sometimes it was just removing "uh"s and other times it was replacing words so that the dialogue flowed better, but at no point did we ever change what the core of the story is. So we changed it but it remained being essentially the same. During that time we also had to practice our rough plays in front of classmates for feedback. It helped since in addition to the feedback that they gave we also just figured out what we could improve by listening to ourselves perform. Here's our final script.
Once we had all of our work done the only step left was to take our play to the real deal stage. Of course we were all a bit nervous but by the time we were at the actual playhouse we were all so prepared that we were too focused on doing good to be nervous.
I feel that the moment that sums up this whole experience would be before we performed and we saw Justin Brooks in the audience. I think it's really cool that he actually showed up to our plays. It was just really cool, it kind of confirmed that what we were doing was more than just a school project. I think that I helped contribute to my project quite a bit. I helped map out and transcribe, look through and edit the script, just all the miscellaneous work that needs to be done. I am most proud that another group asked me to play a character in their play. It wasn't a fairly major role but it was quite important. The lessons that I feel that I learned from this exhibition would probably be cooperation, diligence, communication, and just all of those good things. I believe that every time we have a project we grow a little in every area, the ones I listed out are just the ones that I feel that I grew the most in. So this project has ended and we're approaching the end of the semester, it's going to be a good memory some day, this project.