The Exonerated announces complete cast

Culture Project, in special association with The Innocence Project, have announced the full cast for their tenth anniversary production of The Exonerated, written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen.

The anniversary production will play a limited seven-week engagement at the Bleecker Theater, where it will open on 19 Sep 2012, following previews from 15 Sep, and run through to 4 Nov 2012.

Directed by Bob Balaban (Gosford Park), the core non-rotating company of six will include Jim Bracchitta (Gypsy) as 'Prosecutor 2,' Amelia Campbell (Our Country's Good, A Streetcar Named Desire) as 'Sandra Cook,' Bruce Kronenberg as 'Prosecutor 1,' Curtis McClarin (Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk) as 'David Keaton,' April Yvette Thompson (Clybourne Park) as 'Georgia Hayes' and JD Williams ("The Wire," "Oz") as 'Robert Earl Hayes.'

They will be joined by rotating cast members Stockard Channing, Brian Dennehy, Steve Earle, John Forté, K'naan, Delroy Lindo, Lyle Lovett, Chris Sarandon and Brooke Shields. Exoneree Sunny Jacobs, whose story is shared within the play, joins the cast for one-week from 25 - 30 Sep 2012.

2012 marks the 10th anniversary of Culture Project's New York premiere of The Exonerated, a dramatization of the real-life stories of six individuals who were sentenced to death and later freed amidst overwhelming evidence of their innocence. The play is culled from interviews, letters, transcripts, case files and court records of individuals on death row.

Culture Project Founder & Artistic Director Allan Buchman said, "When authors Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen ... first approached me with their idea for The Exonerated I got chills. It occurred to me then that ideas like theirs were the reason to have a theater. There are 2.4 million people in the American prison system -- a population that is all but invisible to the general public. The Exonerated, with its narrative of struggle, courage and hope, sheds crucial light on elements of our criminal justice system that must be changed. I believe that work this compelling can absolutely spur seismic and vital social change."

The Exonerated premiered at Culture Project in October 2002 where it ran for over 600 performances. The New York Times said, "How often do you feel that what you are seeing is a matter of life and death? Here we see six people who served hard, cruel time on death row before evidence proved them innocent. The stage is courtroom and living room; these people are intrusting their lives to us. Their stories intersect, but the differences between them strengthen the awful likeness that justice imposes when it is blind and deaf."