California Story Fund
Eye for Eye: The Punishment and Retribution Project
Cornerstone Theater Company
Los Angeles
Project Director: Laurie Woolery
Gathering and presenting stories of how the prison system affects individuals’ lives and communities
How are communities and people’s lives affected by the prison system? This project seeks to provide answers to that question.
It consists of a multipart six-week workshop. In the first part, crime survivors, prisoners, the wrongly convicted, prosecutors and judges will share their perspectives in guided story circles.
In the second part, professional artists and community members will interview a prisoner or other individual affected by the prison system, write a script based on recollections of the conversation and then perform a monologue based on the words of the interviewee.
The monologues created from the interviews will be performed for the public in late April 2008.
“The goal of this project is to challenge all participants to confront their beliefs and assumptions about how justice functions in our society,” said Project Director Laurie Woolery, associate artistic director of Cornerstone Theater, where the monologues will be performed.