Julia Weber
Staff Writer
At 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in Bratton Theater, Chautauqua Theater Company brings Execution of Justice center stage in preview performances ahead of opening night this Wednesday.
Execution of Justice grapples with the 1978 assassinations of San Franciso Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the nation’s first openly gay elected official, through the trial of Dan White. It was written by playwright Emily Mann, who is also directing the production.
Actor Zach Appelman, who plays White in the production, was a CTC conservatory member in 2008 and 2009 and returned to the grounds this year as a guest artist for Execution of Justice.
Appelman said coming back to the Institution was an interesting experience for him in which he felt the familiarity of the grounds, but in a different context from when he was here more than a decade prior.
“I’m sure people who are regular Chautauquans and have been coming here for long stretches of their lives have the same feeling where you come back and it feels like the grounds haven’t changed, but your life has changed,” he said. “It’s that interesting experience of refamiliarizing yourself with the same place, but in a very different context of your life.”
Appelman recalled his conservatory experience as being a valuable addition to his acting education. For him, the opportunities to work in professional productions with professional actors was integral.
“That is such a great learning experience for student actors, because you’re getting to take the tools you’ve been developing in your training program, and then go to a professional context, see which of them are serving you, see where you’re still getting tripped up and stuck and where you might need to still work with your teachers some more,” he said. “And then you get to go back to your training program after the summer and really know what it is that you want to develop.”
Appelman earned his MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama and, while a conservatory member, appeared on the Bratton Stage in 2008’s Death of a Salesman, which starred guest artist Stuart Margolin as Willy Loman, and 2009’s Arcadia, among other roles. Since his time at Chautauqua, Appelman earned raves in the title role of Folger Theatre’s production of Henry V, and worked with Julie Taymor in her production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Theater for a New Audience. He’s performed in film and on television, and appeared on Broadway as Sgt. Fine in War Horse.
Recalling his time at CTC, Appelman said he is excited to watch early career actors have the same experience he had.
“They are so talented, and it’s really great to be reminded of what it’s like and see that development and see them growing over the weeks that they’re doing this,” he said.
Execution of Justice is a nonfiction work composed of interviews, transcripts and courtroom documents. For Appelman, he feels a personal responsibility to avoid editorializing the acting out of respect for the real individuals who experienced the event.
“This was a real tragedy that affected real human beings, that took real lives and that affected a city and a community and family members of these people,” Appelman said, “so the detective work that I find myself doing as an actor is really trying to get to the truth as much as possible of what happened, and taking as little creative license as possible because the play is really all about getting to the truth of what happened — not only what happened with the assassinations, but what happened in the trial.”
One of the most compelling parts of the play, to Appelman, is the difference between working with written dialogue by playwrights and working with real-world verbatim trial transcripts. He said the dialogue presents itself quite differently. People talk in disjointed ways; they use incomplete sentences, stutter, pivot and lose their train of thought.
“It’s a blending of this incredibly naturalistic language and a theatrical context. That’s not something I’ve ever done before in my career, and I think it might be a really unique experience for Chautauquans getting to see it,” he said.
Amid a real story documented through extensive primary sources, the play asks viewers to grapple with difficult decisions the jurors faced during the court case.
“How the jurors came to their verdict in this case is complicated and uncomfortable,” Appelman said. “As an actor, it’s a really interesting challenge to try to bring that to life, and hopefully invite the audience (to) consider and grapple with their own biases, and those that are deeply ingrained in our justice system.”
