12 Angry Jurors

Continuing its hit program of lawyers performing for lawyers (and extended audiences), in fully staged dramatic readings of classic shows about the law and the American courtroom, Global Works Productions, in association with Lawyers on Stage and The Auditorium at UHeights, brings you …

…12 ANGRY JURORS, adapted from the classic film and stage play, 12 ANGRY MEN.

The jury remains the cornerstone of the American court system. Juries are the democratic bulwark of that system, in both criminal and civil trials. But being democratic, they are also, necessarily, a reflection of our nation’s deepest values—the best, and sometimes the worst, of those values. In 12 Angry Jurors, 12 men and women, a cross-section of a quintessential American community, are asked to decide whether a 16-year-old boy is guilty for the murder of his father. The evidence seems damning. But when one juror insists that they all at least “talk” before convicting the boy and sending him to Death Row, there ensues a conversation, often bitterly angry, in which each juror is challenged to overcome his or her prejudices and preconceptions in deciding whether there truly is room for “reasonable doubt.”

The 1957 film starred Henry Fonda as the one juror who asks for that “talk,” and featured such luminaries of 20th-Century American theater as Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, Martin Balsam, and E.G. Marshall. Global Works’ production, directed by Seattle theater veteran Theodore Deacon, brings together a talented cast of local courtroom lawyers and jurists that includes the Hon. Marsha Pechman of the local federal bench, and veterans of prior Lawyers on Stage productions such as Alice Brown, Marten King, Michael King, M.J. McCallum, Tim Parker, Marsha Todd, and Susan Roe.

Performances will be at 7:30 p.m., on Friday February 8 and Saturday, February 9, 2019, at the University Heights Community Center, in the University District, Seattle.