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The Bullpen
Funny, skillful, and short, this monologue gives you more truths about the justice system in an hour than any cable drama gives you in a whole season. The Central Park Five, the group falsely arrested in 1989, spoke after the performance Joe Assadourian, writer and sole performer of The Bullpen was just recently released from New York's Otisville Correctional Facility, where he had served twelve years for first degree assault. He has achieved the unlikely feat of making a very entertaining comic monologue out of the story of his arrest and conviction. It's very much worth your time and attention. The story is narrated entirely through the voices of characters addressing each other, the actor never addressing us directly. This succeeds because Assadourian not only has a writer's ear for the nuances of speech, he is also a gifted mimic, efficiently delineating a large cast of characters seemingly without effort. Much of his tale takes place in the holding cells, or "bullpens", of New York jails. We meet many of his fellow detainees, including Roscoe the jailhouse lawyer and Kitty the drag queen. In court we meet his legal aid lawyer, the judge, the prosecutor, and of course the guards. Assadourian's impersonations give each of these their own sound and style of movement, and so the story proceeds with good humor and without self-importance. Though much of the dialogue is expectably coarse it's never just to get a laugh. He presents the common struggle to regain freedom as both deadly serious and shockingly absurd; in other words, true to life. The project began in a workshop lead by Richard Hoehler, who directs this production. Hoehler is one of those Samaritans who volunteer their time assisting the incarcerated. I have met a few, and am in awe of their generosity, as well as their unseen and uncelebrated work. This show is co-produced by The Fortune Society, an organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of the formerly incarcerated. (It seems appropriate to note here that the Society was founded as a direct response to the groundbreaking 1967 prison drama "Fortune and Men's Eyes.") Assadourian's compact story is being presented at irregular times in a tiny midtown venue, and I suggest that even the busiest amongst you should be able to find the time to check it out.
THE “CENTRAL PARK FIVE” ATTEND PERFORMANCE OF “T H E B U L L P E N” The Central Park Five, the group of five young black and Latino youths falsely arrested and convicted in 1989 for the brutal beating and rape of a white woman in Central Park, spoke after the February 7th performance. at a very special one-time event. It was a talkback including the author, State Senator Bill
Perkins, and three featured guests. These men have each served between seven
and thirteen years for a crime they didn't commit, and for which they were
ultimately exonerated when the actual criminal confessed. They are Raymond
Santana, Kevin Richardson, and Yusef Salaam, best known to the world as members
of the Central Park Five. Back in 1989, in the wake of the horrifically brutal
rape of a jogger in Central Park, these young men—boys really, they were as
young as fourteen—were arrested, and in Senator Perkins words "They were
bullied into confessing for crimes that they did not commit." Their
conviction was finally vacated in December 2002, and they have worked to lead
normal lives ever since, in spite of aftereffects of prison life that resemble
PTSD. They speak calmly, articulately, and with good humor about their present
circumstances. The three were enthusiastic about Assadourian's performance. Salaam began, "You know, that was the most amazing thing I've ever seen." Santana felt that "what I got was each part of those characters. I knew a 'Roscoe Jones', that jailhouse lawyer...it took me back." And Richardson agreed: "Briefly: it was hilarious, but at the same time it was raw. It really shows you what goes on inside, and actually how the peers within the prison stuck together, that all they had was each other. And in the beginning that's all we had was each other when it happened in '89." Then they discussed what their experience was like, how they were as young as fourteen years old and that they were convicted because a scapegoat was needed. "It's one thing to go into prison for a crime that you committed, but a completely different thing to go into prison for a crime you didn't, to be in there and to have a label on your back that has you being the worst of the worst, a rapist, that's only trumped by child molestation," Salaam said. Santana picked up on this: "We were labeled the worst people on Planet Earth, and so a lot of people who [had been] in our corner, after we got convicted stayed away." Assadourian responded that it was bad enough when you were guilty, but he could hardly imagine what it would be like if you were innocent: "You're the strongest guys I've ever met in my life." The Bullpen, by Joe Assadourian
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