DelawareScene: The Innocents, percussion duo, Guests Artists @ University of Delaware, Loudis Recital Hall

The Innocents, percussion duo, Guests Artists

The Innocents is social justice advocacy through performance art. The work is an effort to delve deeply into the most current issues surrounding the core subject of wrongful imprisonment and exoneration, as well as a commitment to connect with the communities in which it is performed. We have embraced our role as advocates through the realization that our work cuts to the emotional core of the human experience surrounding these issues.

Using a variety of found-object and home-made instruments, electronic soundscapes, and spoken texts, we (performer-composers John Lane and Allen Otte) have devised a one-hour dramatic soundscape comprised of at least seventeen individual tableaus which endeavor to explore various aspects of the issues surrounding wrongful imprisonment and exoneration in the American criminal justice system: mistaken identity, incarceration, injustice, politics, psychology, and resilience.

The texts spoken in the work are derived from a variety of sources: various historic prison diaries/poetry, interrogation transcripts, Google autocomplete, Thomas Jefferson, Jax (a female prisoner in the Oklahoma State Prison system), Mark Godsey (former NY prosecutor, author of Blind Injustice), captured Chicago police scan chatter, among many other sources. In an effort to make our work relevant, each major performance has originally crafted tableaus (texts and or music) that directly resonate with the local communities in which we are performing.

Some of the pieces are meant to be uncomfortable – a bit too long, momentarily chaotic and confusing, difficult to understand, provocative. Others are simple and direct: melodic and in familiar genres, lyrics recited to percussive accompaniment. Working on an emotional level, our idea is to shine a light on this subject—as if through a prism—in hopes that various aspects surrounding it may briefly come into focus for each of us.

American society’s struggle with mass incarceration is a volatile and divisive issue. While it disproportionately affects people of color, specifically African American men, wrongful conviction is a subset of mass incarceration which resonates across all lines of race, class, political affiliations, age and gender. We have performed this work in a version specially made for educational settings – a public charter school with a range of ages, public high schools, and community colleges. Our experience in these environments is that a non-partisan socio-political issue, presented not as didactic instruction but rather as creative art delivered with the highest level of expertise and commitment, elicits from these younger audiences stimulating, thought-provoking comments and questions, demonstrating palpable engagement with the issue.

Presented by University of Delaware, Department of Music.

Free Music Schools & Universities Northern Delaware