Kathleen Chalfant, Pink Floyd's Roger Waters to Join Culture Project's THE EXONERATED

Culture Project will welcome Broadway veteran Kathleen Chalfant (Angels in America) and musical, singer-songwriter, composer Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) to the rotating cast of the 10th anniversary production of the hit award-winning play, The Exonerated, written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, for the final week of performances through December 2nd at Culture Project (45 Bleecker Street at Lafayette Street) where performances began September 15th.

The rotating cast schedule for the final two weeks of performances is, as follows:

November 20 – 25: Trudie Styler and Steve Earle return to join Anthony Arkin and Ron Cephas Jones

November 27 – December 2: Kathleen Chalfant and Roger Waters join the return of Chris Sarandon. Trudie Styler returns for the final performance.

Directed by Bob Balaban (Gosford Park), the core non-rotating company of six includes Jim Bracchitta (Gypsy) as Prosecutor 2. Amelia Campbell (Our Country’s Good, A Streetcar Named Desire) as Sandra Cook, Bruce Kronenberg as Prosecutor 1, Curtis McClarin (Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk) as David Keaton, April Yvette Thompson (Clybourne Park) as Georgia Hayes, and JD Williams (“The Wire,” “Oz”) as Robert Earl Hayes.

They have been joined onstage by rotating cast members Stockard Channing, Brian Dennehy, Steve Earle, John Forté, Kathryn Grody, Marg Helgenberger, Richard Kind, Christine Lahti, Delroy Lindo, Lyle Lovett, Marsha Mason, Richard Masur, Michael McKean, Joe Morton, Peter Riegert, Chris Sarandon, Brooke Shields, Martin Short, Trudie Styler, Frank Whaley, and Exonerees Sunny Jacobs & Kerry Max Cook, whose stories are shared within the play.

2012 marks the 10th anniversary of Culture Project’s New York premiere of The Exonerated, a ground breaking dramatization of the real-life stories of six individuals who were sentenced to death and later freed amidst overwhelming evidence of their innocence. It is a powerful play culled from interviews, letters, transcripts, case files and court records of individuals on death row. As timely as ever, The Exonerated is once again poised to increase visibility and to create a sense of urgency as part of a rising movement to restore justice to a system that has shown itself time and again to be deeply flawed. Since 1989, when the first DNA exoneration took place, an additional 292 post-conviction DNA exonerations have been won in 36 states.

The Exonerated premiered at Culture Project in October 2002 when it received critical acclaim and ran for over 600 performances. The New York Times declared, “How often do you feel that what you are seeing is a matter of life and death? Here we see six people who served hard, cruel time on death row before evidence proved them innocent. The stage is courtroom and living room; these people are intrusting their lives to us. Their stories intersect, but the differences between them strengthen the awful likeness that justice imposes when it is blind and deaf.”

The Exonerated received the Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, Ovation, Fringe First and Herald Angel Awards, and was nominated for the Hull-Warriner Award and the John Gassner Playwriting Award. It also received awards from Amnesty International, the American Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Death Penalty Focus, and Court TV, and was listed by the New York Times as "The Number 1 Play of 2002." It has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese, and was made into an award-winning movie for Court TV adapted by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen , starring Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover, Brian Dennehy, Aidan Quinn and Delroy Lindo.

The Exonerated plays the following performance schedule: Tuesday – Thursday at 8:00 p.m., Friday at 7:00 p.m., Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 3:00 p.m. & 7:00 p.m.

Weekly Post Performance Talkbacks are scheduled on Tuesday evenings hosted by Ron Tabak and Thursday evenings hosted by The Innocence Project.