The song expressed that the accused couldn’t provide an alibi and so suffered his sentence, though there was no physical evidence condemning the accused.
The lack and unreliability of the evidence displays a society which was underdeveloped and without a sensible law system. This could be the result of the era, as in the 1950s criminal investigations were weak because of the lack of scientific methods that could be used to gather and analyse evidence.
Though we produced work, working from “Long Black Veil”, the role plays the class developed were of a less harsh nature. Instead of being punished with a death sentence, the person taking the blame for another was punished with a detention, loss of pocket money and punishments of a similar severity.
Similarly using a song as a stimulus, the next drama text the group used was “The Hands of Time”, sung and written by Jimmy Nail, an English writer who wrote this song set in an American-style situation. “The Hands of Time” stimulus was given as lyrics rather than hearing the song, as the group did with “Long Black Veil”. The lyrics of “The Hands of Time” described a man who was guilty of murder, while “Long Black Veil” was written about a man who was innocent.
The class used role play to present “Long Black Veil”, whereas “The Hands of Time” was examined using conscience alley. The groups for this stimulus however were considerably smaller than the previous groups of four, and worked in pairs. “The Hands of Time” was socially similar to the previous stimulus, as both stimuli’s displayed situations where the death penalty was in practise. “The Hands of Time” was also culturally similar to “Long Black Veil” as both stimuli’s’ were set in America.
Using conscience alley one actor performed the role of the guilty party walking to the electric chair, while the other contributed the accused thoughts and feelings about what he had done, and what was yet to come. The narration was very effective as it created an atmosphere to the scene. Combined with the restricted, guilty actions of the character walking to the ‘killing chair’ (as the song states), the narration gave the scene a haunting impression.
Some groups used climax at the end of their performance to emphasise the escalation of the guilty party’s thoughts and feelings as the approached the electric chair. This could be done by an increased volume and speed of the narrator’s voice to represent the flustered and confused wishes and apologies. The almost diary-like narration allowed the audience to listen to every thought which occurred to the guilty, whether it was abstract or clear. Narration was used often with different tasks as the way voices are spoken emphasises a scene, the images being portrayed to the audience and the situation all the concerned actors are featured in.
Following “The Hands of Time”, we studied “Our Country’s Good”, a play written by Timberlake Wertenbaker and set in 1789. This stimulus was different to “The Hands of Time” because it was a play, describing the situation of a girl who knew she was guilty, and her prison officer supervising prisoners.
“Our Country’s Good” displayed a situation that was socially different from the two previous stimulus’ studied. At the time, people who were of a lower class status were treated with more severity for their crimes. Criminals who were found guilty were deported from their homeland to Australia as prisoners. In 1789, when there was shortage of prison space, the government felt this was a situation which could be solved by taking criminals away from their country and taken to Australia, where they would follow strict regiments. This situation is also individual historically, as today deporting criminals is not practised.
Using this “Our Country’s Good”, the class created (in groups of three- two actors, one director) role plays of the two characters we looked at in the text. The two characters were Liz and Ralph. Liz was a convict sent to Australia for committing a series of crimes (robbery, soliciting) and Ralph was a soldier in Australia who was working in the prisons with the convicts. In this role play, each character took a few lines from the text and then the scene would cross-cut between the two characters.
Space was used in these role plays to express the differences between the two characters, by cross-cutting at contrasts between Liz and Ralph. Though there were similarities in the two characters (both had negative emotions over their living situations), the role play and cross-cutting also highlighted their differences. Because the scene was rapidly cutting from one characters monologue to another’s, the differences were expressed more clearly. Liz was in chains, talking in her common English speak, while Ralph was given much room to walk in and spoke in proper English.
One group emphasised the social differences between Liz and Ralph using the space available. The first scene was of Liz; as she spoke in her common speak, while chained to a wall. Around her, there was plenty of free space, though the character was limited to a small amount of area in the centre of the stage. The restricted space available to Liz was shown every time she would pull on her chains when frustrated, highlighting that she, a criminal of low class, was not able to walk freely.
Contrasting this, Ralph owned a desk and chair which he was sitting at while writing a letter to his sweetheart. This image of a wealthy man with many possessions was accentuated by Ralph walking about his desk when thinking out loud. The contrast between the dank, squalid conditions of Liz and the affluent, spacious surroundings of Ralph highlighted the social differences between the two characters.
Using contrast again, the class worked on “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” (pronounced ‘jail’). This poem was written by Oscar Wilde. The poem, though similar to “Our Country’s Good” because of its commentary of the guilty party’s actions, expressed the situation in a more poetic sense. “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” used imagery to express the complex situation of the murderer in the poem, where “Our Country’s good” is just a simple commentary.
“The Ballad of Reading Gaol” featured a man who was awaiting the death penalty, accused of murdering his lover. In groups of four, we took about ten continual lines from the poem and expressed them to the audience in tableaux while narrating lines from the text. The still images featured contrasts such as “his step seemed light and gay” and “murdered in her bed”.
Using still image was effective as it involves freezing at critical and important moments and the relating these moments to the audience. Still image also involves highlighting the importance of certain part of the texts and then expressing this to the audience. The still images used were melodramatic in order to relate to the audience the feelings of loneliness, entrapment and guilt written about in the poem.
The poem was written in 1928, and so represented a situation historically different from other stimuli’s set much later or before this date.
Levels were used again in this role play to highlight the different emotions of certain characters in a scene. One group used levels to show how each character expressed hope. Each of the four characters were at different levels, the character at the lowest having the least amount of hope. The characters were joined by holding hands, symbolising the chains of hope between each character. One character was stood at the front of the line, standing up straight, expressing a large amount of hope that while the individuals were incarcerated, there was still hope that their situations would improve.
In my opinion, the death penalty does more harm than good, and so I’m comfortable living in British society where the sentence is not practised. Instead of issuing the death penalty to all murderous criminals, Britain incarcerates them. I feel this is a more beneficial procedure because studying confined prisoners may give a better insight to future criminals or a similar violent nature.
My opinion is mine of my own, and families of murder victims may feel that capital punishment is the only answer for murderers. This is understandable, as I imagine losing a loved one at the hand of another person may drastically change your opinion of the death penalty.
Personally, the workshop only reinforced my opinion that the death penalty was never the answer to murderous criminals. The different texts examined and the feelings of both the remorseful guilty and the accused only made it clear that while the death penalty may seem the easiest way to deal with murderers, it’s not the right way. While rehabilitation and counselling may not be unable to change the character of murderers, killing them could not accomplish much more at all.
January 2004
Aοιfe Murphy 11H