Dead Man Walking

2006 season · Production archive

Adapted by Tim Robbins from his own film, itself drawn from the non-fiction book by Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking is the story of Sister Prejean’s experience as spiritual adviser to Matt Poncelet, a convicted murderer on death row. With no doubt of Poncelet’s involvement in the crime for which he is scheduled to die, Sister Prejean faces the moral and spiritual crisis of offering comfort to the most detestable human being she has ever met — and, if she stands beside him, of facing the victims’ parents, who are seeking justice for an unbearable loss.

The play examines from all sides the question of whether the killing of a human being can be justified. The playwright recognises that there are no clear-cut answers and offers a balanced look at the many sub-issues of the argument; whether for or against capital punishment, the play encourages reflection on why we feel the way we do.

Written by

Tim Robbins

Directed by

Angela Stringer Astle

Ran

February 23 – March 5, 2006

Cast

Terry Ann Watts · Michael Richman · Ajala Bandele · Arielle Brachfeld · William Doheny · Karsten Figueroa · Robin Freeman · Stuart Goldstein · Nury Heckler · Nick Lormand · Patricia Madsen · Kalen Meine · Peggy Miller · Ben Morrow · John Routzahn · Clyde Sacks · Chuck Sherrod · Kristin Stork · Linda Suttle

About the production

This production was staged in conjunction with a university death-penalty week at a Denver law school, and was produced by special arrangement with the playwright through the schools theatre project he established. Robbins has restricted the play to college and university productions in order to keep it inside an educational frame; consistent with that, the Vic’s proceeds were donated as a needs-based scholarship to the next institution producing it.

It became the most-noticed thing the house did. Westword named it Best Production Based On Principle in its Best of Denver 2006 awards, in the same year it named the theatre itself Best Theatrical Resurrection. The production returned to the Vic in 2007 in a second staging, and the fuller account of both runs is kept separately in this archive.

Where it sat in the season

It was production 2 of 8 in the Vic’s 2006 season. It followed The Holdup (Jan 13 – Feb 18, 2006) and was followed by The Deadly Game (Mar 17 – Apr 22, 2006). The full year is set out on the season calendars page, and every production the theatre staged between 2005 and 2011 is indexed in the production archive.

The house’s standard pattern was Friday and Saturday evenings at 7.30 with a Sunday matinee, over a run of six to eight weeks. With seventy-five seats, a full eight-week run put roughly 1,800 people through the room — which a 500-seat theatre does in four nights, and which is the single fact that explains most of what the Vic chose to programme.

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This page is part of the production archive of the Denver Victorian Playhouse, a seventy-five-seat theatre in the basement of a northwest Denver house that staged its last performance in 2011. Details here are restored from the theatre’s own records as they were published at the time; press quotations are reproduced with their original attributions and nothing has been added to them.