Every year our drama department here at Alhambra puts on two shows, a fall play and a spring musical. Almost three weeks ago, the play’s title was announced, “12 Angry Jurors” by Reginald Rose. Auditions for this play were held on September 18th & 19th. On the 18th, auditioners will read a minute-long monologue of their choosing, while on the 19th they will read straight from the script. During the audition process, Mr. Wiener and Mrs. Stafford will begin to narrow down who will be best suited for the roles. And they will have to do a lot of narrowing because they have 40 sign-ups for only 12 roles. Deciding who will be the best for a role is hard, especially with many sign-ups. “We have a lot more than twelve wonderful actors…” Mr. Wiener says, “This is not a talent contest because we have a lot of talented kids, this is not a popularity contest, it’s not like I’m picking my favorites, we are looking for the people who play the part best.”. Multiple parts in the audition process help decide who will fit into a part best, it’s a very complicated process. “It’s a science, but that’s something that Mrs. Stafford and I, we don’t do everything great, but I think we do casting really well together”.
12 Angry Jurors will be Mr. Wiener’s final fall play of his career, and he seems to be very excited about it. This play was originally written as 12 Angry Men, then was rewritten as 12 Angry Women. “What we’re doing is what many people do now because juries are combined, is calling it 12 Angry Jurors, and then we could cast both men and women in any role”. The purpose of this jury is to determine the innocence or guilt of a young man accused of stabbing his father. At the start, there are 11 votes for guilty and one for not guilty, and the play goes from there as they try to figure out whether to send him to the chair or let him free. The unique thing about this play is that all the actors are on stage the entire time. “Most plays there’s a scene with two people, and then it ends, there’s a scene with four people, and maybe there are big scenes and small scenes, but this one, every single actor is on stage from start to finish”. “I was on a jury myself many years ago, and it was fascinating to be in this very position of having to sift through the facts and determine whether to send this man to jail forever or to set him free… It’s a great thing about America that we have juries, it was a very interesting opportunity for me to be a part of that jury, so it makes the show even more kind of interesting and exciting”. It is amazing to have an inside view of how juries work when putting on this play, it just adds a touch of realism to the entire thing. This play also touches on racism and prejudice and how that affects people’s decisions inside juries.
The performance dates are November 13-16, with a Saturday matinée like usual. As mentioned previously, it is Mr. Wiener’s final year here at Alhambra, so this will be the final play of his 38-year teaching career. Thank you to Mr. Wiener for producing such amazing performances and influencing our next wave of young actors.