Dec. 11 program features documentary play on juvenile justice

Playwright Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg says some of the best writing advice she ever received was in a workshop for attorneys on how to write a good legal brief: Start with the person, the instructor said.

“If I start my story with the crime, I've already lost the judge; I've already lost the prosecutor,” she recalls learning. She incorporated that idea into her own work. “It's about not looking at these people as their crimes, but looking at them as people.”

People—that is what Weill-Greenberg hopes audiences see when watching her documentary play, “Life, Death, and Life Again,” a theater piece featuring the actual words of four individuals sentenced to die in prison for violent crimes committed as children, as well as the words of a victim's grandson.

The play, produced by the New Brunswick-based coLAB Arts, will be part of “Life, Death, Life Again—An Essential Look at the Intersection of the Legal Community & Imprisoned Youth in 2019,” a New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education (NJICLE) program taking place in Montclair on Dec. 11.

Following the performance, attendees will participate in an interactive discussion moderated by New Jersey State Bar Association First Vice-President Kimberly A. Yonta and featuring Stephen Chu, supervising attorney of the New York City Office of the Public Defender; Marsha Levick, co-founder of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia; Lawrence S. Lustberg of Gibbons; and Rochelle Watson, assistant deputy public defender in Trenton. Continuing legal education credits are available for the event.

Weill-Greenberg herself is not an attorney, but has worked with attorneys for most of her career. She spent several years evaluating cases for The Innocence Project, the organization that works to exonerate the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and to reform the criminal justice system overall.

The play has been performed in various venues around the region over the past year, including Philadelphia and Trenton, and is always accompanied by a discussion.

“We really want to create a shared, facilitated audience conversation,” said Dan Swern, co-founder and producing director at coLAB Arts. “We think that is a crucial piece…if we're going to ask people to set aside their biases and listen to these stories, we need to give them the opportunity to respond to that.”

Weill-Greenberg said she also hoped the play would help audiences see the inhumanity of life sentences for young people and recognize that justice doesn't always require the harshest possible sentence.

“I think it's very easy to forget that you're dealing with real people who have potential and who have stories to share and who have possibility,” she said. “So my hope, especially for an audience of attorneys, is to remind them of that.”

For more information and to register for the Dec. 11 event, visit njicle.com.