A dramatic performance, a photography exhibit and UNC’s 2007-2008 Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture by Sister Helen Prejean, author of “Dead Man Walking,” will highlight events in February for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s year-long discussion of the death penalty.
“Doin’ Time: Through the Visiting Glass,” written and performed by Ashley Lucas, will be free to the public at 8 p.m. Feb. 8 in Gerrard Hall, off Cameron Avenue. Lucas, a post-doctoral fellow in UNC’s dramatic arts department, uses monologues, voiceovers and video clips in her one-woman piece, which draws on her interviews with prisoners and their families in California, New York and Texas. Lucas also corresponded with more than 400 inmates across the country to create “Doin’ Time,” which pulls her audience through various perspectives on relationships that exist through the visiting glass.
Independent photojournalist Scott Langley will speak at 4 p.m. Feb. 11 in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation Auditorium of the School of Public Health’s Michael Hooker Research Center, located at Pittsboro and South Columbia streets. A reception will follow the talk, which will mark the opening of a free public exhibit of his work at four campus locations.
Langley’s photographs, which depict aspects of the death penalty throughout the United States, will be displayed through March 7 in the atrium of the Hooker Center and the Health Sciences Library on South Columbia Street. Other photos by Langley will be exhibited beginning Feb. 11 in the atrium of Van Hecke-Wettach Hall on Ridge Road (School of Law building) and in the atrium of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at 150 South Road. Closing dates for those venues will be announced later at www.carolinacreativecampus.org , which also includes other details.
Prejean will deliver this year’s Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture at UNC at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 25 in Memorial Hall. Tickets to the free lecture are available at the Memorial Hall Box Office on Cameron Avenue, open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays. Interested parties may reserve tickets by calling the box office at (919) 843-3333.
Prejean’s talk, “Dead Man Walking: The Journey Continues,” will concern her second book, inspired by her work with death row inmates she came to believe were innocent. The book, “The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions,” was UNC’s summer reading program selection for 2007.
Prejean’s first book, “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States,” was made into a 1995 movie starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon. Nominated for multiple Academy and Golden Globe awards, the film won Sarandon a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Prejean. UNC’s dramatic arts department will perform a stage version of “Dead Man Walking” April 18-22.
Prejean, of New Orleans, was instrumental in sparking national dialogue about the death penalty and shaping the Catholic Church’s newly vigorous opposition to all state executions. Since 1984, she has divided her time between campaigning against the death penalty and counseling individual death row prisoners. She is a regular contributor to national and international publications and major television news shows. She holds degrees in English and religious education and has received honorary degrees from universities worldwide, as well as numerous awards.
She works with the Death Penalty Discourse Center, the Moratorium Campaign and the Dead Man Walking Play Project and is at work on a new book: “River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey to Death Row.”
The Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture series was established by Carolina alumni James and Jonathan Gold as a memorial to their father and his commitment to liberal arts education. The 2007-2008 Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture is sponsored by Carolina Performing Arts and the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences.
All three events are part of Carolina Performing Arts’ yearlong project, “Criminal/Justice: The Death Penalty Examined,” which uses the arts to foster discussion of the controversial issue. The project is made possible in part by a grant from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Creative Campus Innovations Grant Program, a component of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Other events for the project this semester are listed at www.carolinacreativecampus.org .
“Criminal Justice” project news release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/aug07/deathpenalty083007.html
Carolina Performing Arts contact: Reed Colver, (919) 843-1833, rcolver@unc.edu
Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence contact: Randi Davenport, Ph.D., (919) 843-7765, rdavenpo@email.unc.edu