The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, March 1, 2019 — 5

COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK

DISNEY CHANNEL

They were doing “High School 
Musical,” of all things. Of course 
I would come back to support 
my sister and my old theatre 
department, but “High School 
Musical?” The movie is iconic and 
an essential part of my childhood. 
The stage musical is an awkward 
embarrassment to theatre and 
Troy Bolton himself. So the 
fact that it was the show I was 
returning to my worst nightmare 
to see somehow made an already 
unfortunate occasion worse.
I have done theatre pretty much 
all my life, to the point where it 
pretty much is my life (yes, I’m 
one of those kids). I love theatre, 
it’s my passion. But my experience 
with high school theatre often 
made me forget that love and lose 
my passion. Throughout my four 
years of high school, I had a lot of 
damaging experiences that really 
impacted me, even to this day. All 
those memories came flooding 
back as I filed into the alumni row 
of the auditorium I knew so well.
Since leaving my high school 
theatre behind, a lot has changed 
in my life. I was a lead in a summer 
show at a respected community 
theatre, I started school at the 
University, I made great friends 
and new memories. Not only had 
my life changed, but I changed. 
I was no longer that little high 
school girl who was damaged 
by disloyal friends and hateful 
directors. So why did I still feel 
so small being put back in that 
environment?
The problem was, I didn’t feel 
like I had overcome my past yet. 
My demons from high school 
were still haunting me. I had 

applied to the School of Music, 
Theatre & Dance but hadn’t heard 
back yet; I hadn’t been able to do 
a show. I didn’t feel like I was any 
more successful in theatre than 
when I was shoved into chorus 
parts and berated by directors. 
I still heard the taunts ringing 
in my ear. I still felt like I wasn’t 
good enough.

Luckily enough, I did end up 
where I wanted to be. At the time 
I went back, I had no idea all the 
good things in store. I didn’t 
know that two days after seeing 
the show, I would get cast in my 
first college show. I didn’t know 
that four days after seeing the 
show, I would be accepted into 
the School of Music, Theatre 
& Dance Bachelor of Theatre 
Arts program. I didn’t have that 
knowledge of success shielding 

me from the insecurities I felt 
when I was back where success 
seemed impossible.
The thing is, sometimes you 
have to face your demons without 
knowledge 
of 
your 
current 
successes shielding you from 
your past failures. I had to find 
that strength in myself, not what 
I had accomplished or how far I’d 
gotten since leaving high school 
behind. Instead of allowing not 
only my high school experience 
to be ruined, but also my post-
high school experience. I tried to 
remember the little things that 
made me happy there and all 
the happy emotions I felt being 
back. I still loved theatre. I still 
was immensely proud of all my 
kids up onstage. I still hugged 
my sister and congratulated my 
friends. Of course, I avoided my 
old director like the plague and 
practically sprinted to the other 
side of the lobby when I saw my 
ex-best-friend — that pain isn’t 
leaving anytime soon. But I didn’t 
let that stop me from enjoying the 
— albeit questionable show — and 
I certainly didn’t let it haunt me 
when I returned to school Sunday 
afternoon.
Sitting in the alumni row of my 
old high school auditorium, seeing 
my past up on the stage in front of 
me, I realized that I will never be 
able to forget my experiences in 
that theatre program. Maybe I 
hadn’t completely overcome my 
past. Maybe I wasn’t necessarily 
where I wanted to be. Maybe I 
would never get to either of those 
points. But I could take comfort 
in knowing how far I’ve come, 
and that I’ll never be back where 
I was again. I found the strength 
in myself to face my demons, and 
they were a lot less scary when 
they looked like Troy Bolton.

Facing your demons, who
look a lot like Troy Bolton

DANA PIERANGELI
Daily Arts Wrtier

Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s “The Exonerated” is dedicated to 
“the exonerated” and “those who are still waiting.” The piece follows 
six wrongfully convicted prisoners from the time of their arrest 
until the time of their release. This past weekend, it was presented 
in the Arthur Miller Theater by the Department of Musical Theatre 
under the direction of Geoff Packard, LSA Lecturer of Drama.
Rather than following one story through to its conclusion, the 
work constantly fluctuates between different stories. The play 
starts soon after each prisoner’s arrest for a crime they did not 
commit. Though the audience may not see the connections between 
each prisoner at first, 
the police’s conduct 
soon 
makes 
this 
connection 
clear; 
in every instance, 
some mix of racism, 
police 
bias 
and 
faulty prosecutorial 
practices 
lead 
the 
inmates 
to 
be 
wrongfully 
convicted.
From 
the 
beginning, the play 
was held together 
by the simple beauty 
of 
its 
production. 
The set was simple: 
three 
black 
boxes 
organized in steps 
and 
twelve 
black, 
armless desk chairs. 
The 
lighting 
was 
similarly elegant and 
minimal: purple lights highlighting the concrete wall in the back 
of theater, frequent blackouts and spotlights accompanying the 
changes in scene.
Between scenes, the cast would hum and wordlessly sing brief 
melodic passages, accompanied by simple recordings of a guitar 
at some points and a piano at others. While melodically and 
harmonically simple, these brief interludes did much to punctuate 

the otherwise heavy subject matter.
As the School of Music, Theatre & Dance had advised, the 
production contained multiple instances of strong language. In 
one instance in particular, a prisoner’s false arrest and conviction 
is accompanied by clear racial bias 
on the part of the police — they are 
depicted using the n-word casually 
and repeatedly to refer to this prisoner. 
While this callous use of the n-word 
was perhaps realistic, it was hard to 
palette.
This set the tone for the next half 
hour of the play, as it moved between 
various failures of the criminal justice 
system. One 
prisoner was 
convicted on 
questionable 
forensic 
evidence, 
another 
on 
the 
false 
testimony of 
a murderer 
who 
immediately 
reached 
a 
plea 
deal 
with the police. And in every instance, 
these prisoners’ lives were torn apart as 
they were convicted of a crime that they 
did not commit.
From there, the play focused on their 
collective experiences in prison, some 
more pleasant than others. The play also 
began to focus on the death penalty and 
the morality of the prisoners being put 
on death row. “Why do we do that?” one 
prisoner asked.
In one particularly jarring instance, as a prisoner on stage spoke 
about execution by electric chair, the lights over the audience 
flashed bright white three times. All around me, audience members 
muttered in fright and surprise — lighting designer Emily Miu more 
than succeeded in shocking her audience, assuming this was her 
goal.

As the play moved past these false convictions and lengthy 
imprisonments, however, it began to lose steam. The exoneration 
prior to execution of every prisoner (save one prisoner’s husband), 
for example, felt a little unrealistic. Up until this point, the play 
had 
succeeded 
in 
its 
suspension 
of 
disbelief. 
But 
the 
sudden change from 
extremely dark subject 
matter 
to 
inspiring 
legal 
challenges 
made me question the 
plot, particularly the 
selection of these six 
specific cases and the 
degree to which they 
are representative of 
the larger American 
criminal 
justice 
system.

The 
play’s 

depiction of women, 
furthermore, 
was 
lacking. Most of the 
women were wives of 
wrongfully convicted 
prisoners; throughout 
the play, they existed 
on stage solely through the wrongful convictions of their husbands.
The play featured one female prisoner, a woman convicted of 
murder and sentenced to death row along with her husband. Though 
she made it out of prison, her husband was executed. And in the end, 
she framed the remainder of her life largely through her husband’s 
wrongful execution and the time that she had lost with him. The 
women in the play lacked autonomy — a feature of the mid-20th-
century setting of the play that nevertheless felt like a slight moral 
failing.
On the whole, the play was a poignant reminder of the pressure 
that many police forces feel to arrest a suspect for violent crimes, 
and thus the frequent wrongful convictions that permeate the 
criminal justice system. It was a dark, serious narrative that was 
troubling and hard to watch at times. And yet I left convinced of the 
failures of our criminal justice system and committed to working 
to fix this problem. It was something that I will not soon forget – 
something that I will no doubt be thinking about for a long time.

‘The Exonerated’ exposes injustices of justice system

SAMMY SUSSMAN
Daily Arts Writer

COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

Between scenes, the cast would hum 
and wordlessly sing brief melodic 
passages, accompanied by simple 
recordings of a guitar at some points 
and a piano at others

In one particularly jarring instance, 
as a prisoner on stage spoke about 
execution by electric chair, the lights 
over the audience flashed bright white 
three times

The opening track on the 
new Lily & Madeleine record, 
Canterbury Girls, is called “Self 
Care” — a reference, surely, to 
the lately revitalized cultural 
priority 
of 
self 
care. 
But 
Indiana 
sisters 
Lily 
and 
Madeleine 
Jurkiewicz 
are a package 
deal, and even 
a song that 
nominally 
seems 
to 
look 
inward 
ultimately 
functions as 
a 
dialogue 
between 
them. 
The 
lines 
from 
the 
chorus 
— “I’m sure 
you 
don’t 
understand 
/ 
Who 
the 
hell I think 
I am / Your 
beautiful 
eyes are sad 
and 
scared 
/ But I can’t 
make myself care” — hint at a 
relationship of tough love and 
honest conversation, making 
it a strong characterization of 
what is to come from the rest of 
the album.
Canterbury 
Girls 
marks 
the fifth full-length album 
for Lily & Madeleine, who 
first attracted listeners with 
the melodic, complementary 
synchrony 
of 
their 
voices 
and 
harmonies 
featured 
in 
homemade 
high 
school 
YouTube videos. Their ouevre 
is one marked by a careful 
consistency, primarily working 
in the realm of folk pop and 
constantly making use of the 
natural ways in which their 
soft vocals join one another and 
intertwine.
This 
newest 
addition 
is 
named after Canterbury Park 

in Indianapolis, where the 
sisters would sometimes go to 
play while growing up. While 
the sisters have relocated to 
New York City, it’s clear from 
their sound that they still hold 
the roots of their music very 
close 
to 
heart. 
Canterbury 
Girls finds them continuing to 

make use of their trademark 
hypnotic harmonies, while also 
diving deeper into the pop-
informed atmosphere that has 
distinguished Keep It Together 
and some of their other recent 
releases. 
Nowhere 
do 
they 
abandon the sounds of the 
Midwest entirely, but they do 
explore more geographically 
on tracks like “Pachinko Song,” 
which tracks Lily on a journey 
through Tokyo: “I ran through 
Tokyo hoping to find the place 
/ Where only I could be, but 
I never found it / But I never 
found it.”
“Soaked 
in 
sunshine, 
don’t know where to be,” the 
Jurkiewicz sisters sing on the 
titular 
track, 
“Canterbury 
Girls.” Yet the album itself, as 
a whole, feels like it exists in a 
somewhat more liminal space 

— hinted at by the album cover, 
which depicts the two of them, 
inclined toward each other and 
toward us, standing in front 
of a vast lake under a haze 
of purplish clouds. Purples, 
oranges and yellows converge 
on this cover in the visages of 
Lily and Madeleine, evoking 
a 
soft 
space 
that 
could 
be 
either a sunrise 
or 
a 
sunset, 
depending 
on 
your 

interpretation.
In a musical 
sense, 
the 
explorations 
and 
preoccupations 
of 
the 
album 
do 
indeed 
maneuver 
around 
the 
edges 
of 
a 
liminal 
softness. Songs 
like 
“Bruises,” 
“Circles” 
and 
“Analog 
Love” dip into 
a 
reflective 
and 
at 
times 
melancholy 
sensibility. 
On 
the other hand, 
“Supernatural 
Sadness,” 
“Pachinko Song” and “Can’t 
Help the Way I Feel” are all 
somewhat jauntier melodies 
that feel like they’ve drawn 
inspiration from the fringe pop 
hits of earlier ages.
Canterbury 
Girls 
delves 
into melancholy, love, sadness 
and sisterhood. It’s a trim 
ten songs, some of which are 
more pop-inspired and seem 
to beckon reawakening and 
rejuvenation, while others feel 
more like dreamy incantations 
or even sore laments. Lily and 
Madeleine sound as magical 
together as ever, and even 
though they haven’t forged 
paths into remarkably new 
territory, they do continue to 
deliver quality songs that strike 
a fine balance between peace 
and despair, beauty and pain, 
harmony and solitude.

Lily & Madeleine’s dreamy
folk-pop on their stunning
release, ‘Canterbury Girls’

ALBUM REVIEW

Canterbury Girls

Lily & Madeleine

New West Records

Cost

LAURA DZUBAY
Daily Arts Wrtier

Since leaving 
my high school 
theatre behind, 
a lot has 
changed in my 
life