The Innocents
Please see the events listing for upcoming events.
The Innocents, by John Lane and Allen Otte, is a one-hour dramatic soundscape composed of 17 individual tableaus which endeavor to explore various aspects of wrongful imprisonment and exoneration in the American criminal justice system: mistaken identity, incarceration, psychology, politics, injustice, and resilience. Though we do this from our admittedly privileged perspective, we have available not only the information—both factual and testimonial—but, significantly, we have resources of a time and sound-based art.
In performance we have the opportunity to direct and focus not only attention, but more importantly, to engage on an emotional level where experience is more than simply processing facts and figures. Some of the pieces are meant to be uncomfortable—too long, momentarily chaotic and confusing, difficult to understand. Others are simple and direct. Our idea is to shine a light on this subject—as if through a prism—in hopes that various aspects surrounding it may briefly come into focus for each of us. We offer no answers, but through our work we strive to confront questions.
Art provides a platform for advocacy and affords us an opportunity to raise our voices in the name of something other than ourselves in an eloquent and hopefully memorable way. In the current socio-political landscape where we are confronted with the most egregious examples of the opposite of that, our offering wishes to prove the power of empathic engagement with issues that ultimately touch all of our lives.