In 2002, Tim Robbins wrote the stage play of DEAD MAN WALKING
based on Sister Helen Prejean’s best-selling book. Several years earlier,
in 1995, Tim directed the critically 
acclaimed
film of the same name, starring Susan Sarandon—who won an Oscar for
her performance as Sister Helen—and Sean Penn.
The idea for a play was first sparked around 1998 when Sister Helen read a
New Yorker article which recounted that Arthur Miller’s DEATH
OF A SALESMAN had been performed one million times and that on each day of
the year, somewhere in the world, the play is performed.
Sister Helen explains,
I sent Tim the article, urging him to write the stage play of DEAD MAN
WALKING, saying, "If we have a play, it can be reproduced endlessly,
and everyone involved in performing it, as well as the audience, will be brought
into deeper reflection about the death penalty."
Tim agreed and crafted a powerful
script for the play. However, instead of taking the play to Broadway, Tim
decided to offer it for one year to a selected number of schools and universities
across the United States to perform and use as a focus for deepening reflection
on the death penalty.
The original idea was to allow
this group of schools to perform the play, and give him feedback. He would
then write the definitive version and seek to get the play produced professionally
on Broadway.
But reports of the amazing power of the play to stir discussion in the local
communities of the 30 schools where it was performed, convinced Tim to get
the play “out of the box” and directly into the hands of students
across America.
That’s how The Dead Man Walking
School Theatre Project was born.
Sister
Helen and Tim are both convinced of the power of the arts to stir reflection
and deepen public discourse. To further the discourse, one of Tim's
requirements for schools participating in the project has been that the
issue of the death penalty be taken up in at least two departments, such as
sociology, law, philosophy, religious studies, other than the theater department.
Forgoing all royalties rightfully his as playwright,
Tim is directing them to The
Actors’ Gang, a Los Angeles theatre ensemble he helped found in
1981, whose original works for the stage and daring reinterpretations of the
classics are “raw, immediate, socially minded, and crafted with the
highest artistic standards.”
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© Copyright 2006.
Dead Man Walking School Theatre Project.
All Rights Reserved.
For about five years after the film came out, Tim
Robbins and I were in conversation about a possible stage play of DEAD
MAN WALKING. Through the film, then the opera, I was convinced of
the power of the arts to stir reflection and deepen public discourse. After
many on-agains and off-agains, early in 2002 Tim wrote the play. He called
me up to New York for a reading, and he and I and everyone in the room were
blown away by its power, even though it was simply read.
~ Sister Helen Prejean
