Coyote on a Fence • A Powerful Morality Tale About Evil & Redemption

As Pit & Balcony continues upon their ambitious 93^rd theatrical season with the regional premier of playwright Bruce Graham’s provocative, controversial, and deeply challenging 1998 morality tale Coyote on a Fence, director Todd Thomas has his work cut out for him when it comes to rendering the nuanced complexities of this profound morality tale about evil transgressions, acts of retribution, and the role of redemption within the divided and often embattled fabric of human civilization.

With a series of performances set for April 4-6 & 11-13^th, the play takes place in a prison in the Southern United States and is based upon the true story of John Brennan - a white, middle-aged and fairly well-educated death row prisoner who feels a sense of denial about his crime of kicking in the face of a drug dealer named Dwayne Rigby. Articulate and well-read, he writes obituaries about other death-row inmates for the prison’s newspaper, The Death Row Advocate, and meets Bobby Reyburn - an uneducated member of the Aryan Nation  carrying a death sentence for burning a church filled with African-American worshippers.  Illiterate yet affable, Bobby loves to do impressions and watch soap operas.

Following executions, John publishes obituaries that tell the stories of the executed but never mentions the crimes committed. He seeks to find the humanity in each of his subjects and John's writing starts to draw national attention along with the interest of a journalist, Sam Fried,  a white Jewish writer for The New York Times, who wants to do a story about him.

Bobby and John are in adjoining cells on death row and Bobby freely admits his guilt and is ready to die, while John insists on his innocence and fights to live.  As each of these two inmates awaits his final fate under the watchful eye of their female guard, Shawna DuChamps, they confront, comfort, and change each other through their interactions, which prompt us to explore several pivotal questions: Can one be redeemed in the final hours of life? Is everyone redeemable even if they aren’t seeking redemption?

With a cast consisting of Bill Campbell in the role of John Brennan, Bill Ailey as Bobby Reyburn, Katie McLean-Peters as Shawna DuChamps, and Ralph Mancini as Sam Fried, director Todd Thomas says that while this play is challenging for many reasons, the place to begin is with the moral dualities existing within these characters that color the complexity of their values.

“One thing I was really attracted to is the story behind this production, because the story it looks like it’s telling at first glance isn’t really the story its telling", states Todd. “While it’s based upon a true story it isn’t meant to be historical, and the goal of the character of John Brennan, who writes these obituaries, is to present these people seen as monsters within society as real human beings. He looks for their humanity. While he’s writing these pieces as an inmate on death row, as an audience member we quickly figure out he is also intelligent, articulate, and likeable.”

“What we have are these two characters - one that you forget is on death row because he’s not just a guy who’s writing obituaries, but he’s also got purpose; and the other one, Bobby, who we dislike from the beginning because he’s a member of the Aryan Nation and has committed a heinous crime that is truly monstrous.”

“Coyote on a Fence isn’t really about whether one is pro or con capital punishment, because that’s part of the mechanism of enforcement; but the real question is that of how we draw our moral lines and whether there is a place for redemption involved in this equation,” states Todd. We find out Bobby, who has committed this heinous crime, is also very likeable. As you get to understand more about why he is what he is, he becomes a very sympathetic character; and at that point start to challenge this idea of does he deserve to die?”

“The dialogue between the two along with the prison guard and the reporter lead us through this process of realizing that although he’s committed a heinous act, he’s also had a heinous life, so as we feel sorry for him we start to ask whether because he had this horrible life does it warrant excusing the horrible things he’s done? That’s the conversation people will walk away with once the curtain drops and the play ends.”

According to Thomas, the crux of the theme in Coyote on a Fence is what is the nature of redemption?  “We have this New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who is naïve as Hell, and as he starts to put his story together he combines the heinous nature of prisoners on death row with the search for their humanity that John uses in his obituaries, which John doesn’t like at all - and the other part of him feels if the state is also murdering people than all people should be fighting for their justice.”

Within this context of audience deliberation that Thomas describes, the potent poignancy of this play is elevated by the fact that not only do we learn about this horrific life Bobby had, but we also learn about the terrible legal defense he had at his trial, and start to examine the morality behind whether capital punishment is wrong because it is systemically visited upon those who regardless of whether they are Hispanic, African-American, or Caucasian, do not have the means - either financially or intellectually - to defend themselves.

When asked about the cast, Thomas says the actors in each of these four roles are a mix of experienced veterans and fresh-faced newbies.  “It’s fun to have real experienced actors mixed with novice actors because it’s like teaching a first level acting class at the same time you’re teaching a graduate class,” he reflects.

“Bill Campbell and Katie McLean-Peters both have years of stage experience, while Bill Ailey and Ralph Mancini are actually quite new on stage. It’s been a lot of fun directing them, but what’s particularly striking is that this is only Bill’s second play and he’s been easy to direct and open to discovery, especially with such a difficult and challenging role as an Aryan supremacist,” he notes. “Bill is putting ton of effort into that role and its difficult because he doesn’t usually use that type of language, so half way through an early rehearsal he would stop and apologize to make sure we didn’t think he actually believes the lines he’s reading from the script, which of course we told him not to stress about because we all knows it’s called ‘acting’.”

“Bringing the nuance out is the hard part, because the script is very well written and has points of realization written like beats in the script, so the actors need to let them breathe at the time a particular action suddenly clarifies what’s been going on within the narrative, so getting that rhythm down with the actors is what I’m focused on at this stage of the game.”

“One of the interesting components of Bobby’s character is that he forces us to deal with questions of whether this person is so evil that nothing else matters, and that’s an uncomfortable place to put yourself in,” concludes Thomas. “One of the things I love most about Pit & Balcony is how they take on the tough questions, and in a way Bobby has a code of honor almost the way a veteran soldier in the armed forces sees himself like a soldier or a patriot.  His attitude is if death is what comes, it’s what comes.”

Coyote on a Fence is a meaty, loaded, and highly charged exercise in powerful theatre that will surely provide plenty of meaty substance to chew upon on the drive home after the curtain drops, so this is one production you definitely won’t want to miss.  It’s the type of play that asks whether love and understanding truly binds us as a nation together, or is it outrage at those evils we opt to ignore or dismiss?

The regional premiere of ‘Coyote on a Fence’ runs from Friday through Sunday, April 4-6 & 11-13 at Pit & Balcony Theatre, 805 N. Hamilton St., in Old Town Saginaw. Performance times are 7:30 PM with 3:00 PM Sunday matinees. Tickets are $20.00 and available online at PitandBalconyTheatre.com or by phoning 989.754.6587.