Full Dress

On Sunday we had our first full dress with an actually real live jury. It was a little disconcerting but not as difficult as I had originally thought it would be. They are funny! So serious. The sparse audience of...well, I don't actually know who those people were...but they laughed at the jokes and enjoyed the show but the jury was SO serious. They took their role seriously and concentrated and paid attention. There was one woman on the jury who I barely wanted to look at. She was all scowly and scary. And then after the show she was laughing and pleasant.

The rehearsal was pretty good. It was definitely nice to have an audience even if it was only eighteen people counting the jury. But L again went off the rails. Right at the top of Act III he forgot a line and it was impossible for anyone at all to put him back on track due to the set-up and the characters positions. And this line that he forgot brings another character on and I go up on the stand immediately after his entrance so there was nothing for it but for me to go on the stand and hope for the best for the sections that the character has a line. Well part way through a line very early in my testimony all of a suddenly L realizes Oh Yeah! So he cuts me off and brings the character on and I breathe a sigh of relief but I’m a little thrown and I’m pretty sure that it shows up in my testimony with my defense attorney that I’m not as in control and sure of myself and I should be as a character. So it makes me look a little weak. Maybe it helps me with the jury. Maybe it doesn’t who knows. Then it’s L’s turn to do the cross examination. For some reason my attorney, M, keeps forgetting to object or when he does it’s very weak. And then L forgets a line and asks me what keeps Faulkner visiting me after his marriage “love or hate?” Love or hate? What the frak? I don’t have a clue how to answer that question and I have no idea how I did answer that question. But I’m pretty sure my answer screwed me. Of course as soon as I got off the stand I realized how I should have answered it. I should have said “unless you mean his hatred for Nancy Lee and John Graham Whitfield, I have no idea what you are talking about.” But I apparently am not that quick on my feet the first time in front of an audience. Love or fear, L, love or fear. Love or hated doesn’t even make sense.

In the end, however, they found me not guilty. I think it’s going to be very difficult to find me guilty at all. For one thing even though we never discuss the concept of reasonable doubt I think people watch enough television drama to know what it is, what it means, and how it’s employed in the American justice system that there is no way that there is an ironclad case against me and there is quite a bit of doubt. And I don’t think that people dislike me personally enough. I think no matter how arrogant and unrepentant I am my obvious distress over certain events in the case make me just likeable enough that they don’t want to send me down river. And that the prosecution isn’t just the face of the state but also the spoiled heiress and the entitled “philanthropist” who also looks pretty dirty in the murder. But the director H tells me it wasn’t unanimous so we’ll see what we can do.