“Would you indict Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown?”
That is the question posed by a new play, Ferguson, that will make its debut in April at the Odyssey Theater in Los Angeles.
The play, written by journalist, producer, and documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer, will be the first to explore the controversial shooting of African-American teenager Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri last summer. The show will recreate the shooting using witness testimony presented during grand jury proceedings in Ferguson, where the jury ultimately declined to pursue an indictment against Wilson.
“I want to bring the truth about what happened that day to the stage,” McAleer said in a statement. “I think audience members will be very surprised, even shocked, when they hear the clear and unaltered truth about the events that took place on Aug. 9, 2014.
“There are a lot of myths and half-truths circulating about the shooting. Ferguson is a chance to dispel these once and for all.”
The play is set to run for four nights between April 26-29, at Los Angeles’ Odyssey Theater. The show’s styling will be based on “verbatim theater,” a form of documentary play “constructed from the precise words spoken spoken by people interviewed about a particular event or topic.” Ferguson will be directed by award-winning theater director Nick DeGruccio, who successfully brought another “verbatim theater” show, The Laramie Project, to the Laguna Playhouse and the Colony Theater.
McAleer has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to bring the show to life. The producer, who is currently working on the upcoming film Gosnell, about notorious Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell, has successfully utilized the crowdfunding platform with his previous film FrackNation, as well as with Gosnell. McAleer explained that crowdfunding allows him to bring traditionally controversial topics to the stage and screen with the public’s help.
“I know people want the truth to be told, so now they can be part of the process by going to FergusonThePlay.com to help make that happen,” McAleer said.
McAleer’s Gosnell film became the most successful fundraising effort for a single film in Indiegogo history, raising over $2 million from more than 25,000 backers. The film will be produced by 2016: Obama’s America producer John Sullivan, Ann McElhinney, and Magdalena Segeida. Nick Searcy, star of the FX hit television show Justified, is set to direct the picture. Check out Breitbart News’ interview with Searcy here.
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