GAGE COUNTY NE

2021
Beatrice Community Players
Beatrice Nebraska

Cast

Written and Directed by Cecilia Rubino
Grant Bennett
Josh Erikson
Mason Gustafson
Ashley Hothan
Diane Kahnk
Heidi Krieger
Carla Loemker
Missy Marlatt
Walter J. McDowell III
Katy Morehouse
Paige Patton
Lisa Steiner
Marshall Tuttle
Elizabeth Veverka
Callan Williams
Michael Zavodny

GAGE COUNTY NE: DIRECTOR’S NOTE

“Why did this happen? Why did this happen here?”

These questions posed in the play you are about to watch are questions that communities across the country ask after a trauma or an act of senseless violence. GAGE COUNTY NE is a documentary theater piece that delves into the controversial case of Mrs. Helen Wilson's murder, those accused of the crime now known as ‘The Beatrice Six’ and the subsequent trials that have affected Gage County for more than three decades. It’s a Beatrice story which importantly is told by community members but it’s also a national story with the recent appeal to the Supreme Court of the wrongful conviction award and the additional taxes that Gage County property owners are currently paying.  

But why create a documentary theater piece about this complicated, painful story? For me, the medium of documentary theater can offer a space to take on confounding issues from multiple perspectives. Documentary Theater -- also called ‘Verbatim Theater’ or ‘Theater of Testimony’

-- are plays that are created from documentary sources which include trial transcripts, interviews, news articles, and other historic documents. This form of theater has an important legacy in the history of American theater from the ‘Living Newspapers’ performed during the Great Depression to seminal works such as The Laramie Project, Fires in the Mirror, and The Exonerated, which have played a role in raising awareness, informing, and spurring action about important issues.

We are all inundated by the news. We may read about an event on our phones or listen to a story on TV, but we rarely have the time to delve under a headline. In the theater, we collectively gather -- we shut the door, turn the lights out, and sit together for 90 minutes to hear stories told through many different voices. It has been a real privilege to collaborate with the staff at the Beatrice Community Players and with this wonderful cast of actors who have so generously offered their time and their considerable talents to the devising of GAGE COUNTY NE. And while the crime is not recreated in the performance, some of the stories told that are based on the trial transcripts are disturbing. And maybe none of us has answers to the questions that the piece wrestles with, but we have to keep asking them and, perhaps in the process re-evaluate our assumptions and instigate one another in unexpected ways. Thank you for taking the time to come and we hope that GAGE COUNTY NE will contribute to generative dialogues both in Beatrice and beyond.