Trial in the Woods
On the morning of the 5th gibbous moon, Ovelia Otter attacks and kills Pennstin the young wolf at Bear Chondra's Mix Flow Get Up And Go exercise class. That same afternoon, Ovelia Otter is brought before a jury of her peers, Judge Bodon Boar presiding. Prosecutor Lynx believes she should be expelled from animal society immediately, while Defense Squirrel S. argues animal instinct ought not to be prosecuted at all. Witness after witness are called to the stand and the forest's animals hang on the trial's every word—most more interested in the spectacle than its outcome. One part crime procedural and one part fable, Stephanie Barber's Trial in the Woods is a bold new play about ethics, the efficacy of punitive justice, and our (human, American) criminal justice system. It's also very, very funny.
Stephanie Barber is a writer and artist who has created a poetic, conceptual and philosophical body of work in a variety of media, often literary/visual hybrids that dissolve boundaries between narrative, essay, and dialectic works. Her work considers the basic questions of human existence (its morbidity, profundity, and banality) with play and humor.
