Execution of Justice

by Emily Mann

Creative Team
Director: Tom Dugdale
Media Designer: Alex Oliszewski
Scenic Designer: Cassie Lentz
Lighting Designer: Kelsey Gallagher
Costume Designer: Cynthia Overton
Sound Designer: Caleb Naugle

OSU, Department of TFMA
Thurber Theatre

2018

Background

Execution of Justice revisits the trial of the man who assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978. The play reconstructs courtroom testimony and public reactions to examine how systems of power, prejudice, and performance shaped the outcome.

Design Overview

The play’s fragmented structure and documentary tone required a media design that could shift between intimacy, spectacle, and mediated distance. I collaborated closely with Scenic Designer Cassie Lentz to integrate media into the moving architecture of the set. A central projection surface—a white screen with four degrees of movement across the X and Y axes—served as both scenic element and projection target. I developed a mapping system that could track and maintain image alignment across this motion, allowing projections to shift fluidly with the set.

A wired live camera system, operated onstage by performers, was embedded into the performance environment to magnify faces and gestures in real time. This gave the courtroom scenes an added layer of psychological proximity and mirrored the visual language of surveillance and televised trials.

The show opened with a five-minute original short film created in collaboration with Director Tom Dugdale and the actors in the play. The piece depicted an idealized version of the murderer’s home life and set a tonal contrast for the trial that followed. This film, paired with the live-feed system and automated scenic media, positioned projection as both an emotional and narrative engine within the performance.

We see the police interrogating a man who is admitting to murdering Mayor George Moscone and City Council Member Harvey Milk.
A screen floats into place as a live security camera captures and frames the moment in real time.
A live camera magnifies the actors’ performance for the audience on a moveable screen.
During the interrogation, the murderer identifies the weapon used in the killings of George Moscone and Harvey Milk.
The prosecution lays out the facts of the case.
Projections are mapped to and able to dynamically maintain framing on the white screen that had four degrees of motion in the X and Y axes.
As the first act ends the murderer grows concerned their actions may have consequences.
The scaffolded set splits open revealing a large screen hanging in space and reveals a new setting for the second act.
Recess
Act Two: In Defense of Murder
The judge directs the jury.
People that had met the murderer prior to his arrest describe his character.
“The Twinkie defense.”
A panel of doctors claim that the murderer’s binge eating of junk food might suggest a lack of forethought or malice—despite the methodical nature of the murderer’s actions, including breaking into a government building, bypassing security, requesting a private meeting with George Moscone, shooting him multiple times then calmly walking down the hall and waiting about 10 minutes to meet with Harvey Milk before shooting him.
White shadows mill about outside the courthouse.
The murderer is spared the death sentence.
Television footage from interviews of people on the street just before the riots broke out.
We mourned. We rioted.
Historical archival footage from the riots following the murderer’s court case is projected against the back wall of the theatre as performers recall their pain and frustration at this failure in the justice system.

Reference video documenting a moment in technical rehearsals where media and automation were working on their recess and intermission cue.

The drop of the government building and the floating screen pull into the sky. The scaffolded set splits open to reveal a large screen hanging in space.

Video for portfolio use only.