"Dead Man Walking" was first a book by Sister Helen Prejean, who described her experiences with a death row inmate convicted of a vicious double murder in Louisiana. Next Tim Robbins directed the hit movie of the same name with Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon. Then Jake Heggie, with librettist Terrence McNally, composed a powerful opera commissioned and premiered by the San Francisco Opera.
Now Robbins has turned it into a stage play that is being presented by colleges and universities across the country under the auspices of the Dead Man Walking School Theatre Project. One of those universities is Notre Dame de Namur in Belmont, a small Catholic school that is the fifth-oldest institution of higher education in California. It was founded by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur as a women's college in 1851, but it is now co-educational.
Directed by Michael B. Elkins, NDNU professor of theater, the large cast features primarily students along with a few faculty and community members and even the university president, Dr. John B. Oblak as Chaplain Farley. As a student production, the acting can be somewhat uneven, but the central characters are noteworthy: Katherine Hill as Sister Prejean and Justin Basl as Matthew Poncelet, the convict. Both are outstanding.
NDNU is presenting the play as part of the yearlong examination of the death penalty by the university's School of Arts and Humanities Center for Social Justice. Its production not only succeeds on the dramatic and academic levels but also fulfills its mission to provoke thought and discussion about the death penalty.