NOTES FROM THE DIRECTOR: Welcome to the Stagedogs 2022-23 season! We are thrilled to kick things off with 12 Angry Jurors.  This staple of American courtroom dramas is a uniquely demanding piece and a perfect start to the season.  It requires a cast of 12 to be on stage for almost the entire play, which means each actor must be constantly present and in character.  This can be quite the challenge for those characters who do not have a great many lines in a scene.  Certainly, the audience is asked to pay attention to the characters who are laying out the intricacies of the case, but they are also asked to notice the small character moments that may not even be highlighted by a line.  Each character has at least one. This lends the play a texture and depth and raises it to the level of a classic, and each of the actors has worked hard to meet this demand of the show.  In regard to the theme of the play, and there are of course many, our production chose to focus on the contrast between the ideals we as a society have set for ourselves and the realities of our day-to-day lives.  All of the characters face their individual struggles: their own biases and wants; their own doubts and feelings of inadequacy; their own sense of the rights and wrongs of the case. None of them are perfect, and while there are certainly less than noble characters amongst them, none of them are perfectly evil either. The central three characters (No. 3, 4 and 8) represent emotion, reason, and will respectively. Though it’s tempting to think of No. 3 as the villain - Sergel’s note is that he has sadistic tendencies - our production has chosen not to portray him this way.  Instead, he is a man who lets his temper get the best of him and has lingering emotional demons as a result.  No. 4 is a man who has earned everything he has through careful planning and hard work.  As such, he is restrained and utterly confident in his own point of view and capacity for reason -- so much so that he fails to consider the idea that he may have missed something in the case.  No. 8 is often regarded as the hero of the play, as the person who demands that the other jurors live up to the ideals represented by our justice system, and we have chosen to portray her this way. That said, she is not perfect.  She has only an instinct that something about the case is not right, but she does not know what that is.  It is her will -- her refusal to simply accept what the others see as obvious -- that pushes the plot forward.  One final note about the title change -- many people have commented about it to me and the kids in the cast, I can say only this: there is no political or social agenda in the name change. The only reason for the change is as simple as the students interested in performing here at WHS are of different genders, and so the play and its title were adjusted to accommodate this. That’s it.  So on behalf of the cast and crew, I ask you to sit back and enjoy the show!

Performed November 4-6th 2022

The cast and crew would like to dedicate this performance to the memory of Chris DiPaola, the Voice of Westerly.

He was a great supporter of the arts and a true friend.