‘Reasonable Doubt’ play includes scenes from Stanley trial

A play commissioned by Saskatoon’s Persephone Theatre features scenes from the controversial trial of Gerald Stanley.

The Saskatchewan farmer was charged with murder in connection with the 2016 shooting death of Colton Boushie.

The case inflamed racial tensions across the province and received international media attention.

Following a two week trial, a jury found Stanley not guilty.

The details of the trial are included in an upcoming play called Reasonable Doubt.

Joel Bernbaum, one-third of the creative team involved in the production, conducted interviews and edited the content of the play.

He told John Gormley it follows a unique format.

“It’s going to look like a live documentary,” he said. “Actors are going to be up on the stage shifting between the roles of different people in our community, speaking words that were actually spoken in conversations, and then shifting into transcripts from the Stanley trial.”

In addition to interviews and transcripts, Bernbaum said music composed by Lancelot Knight provides commentary and gives the audience an opportunity to reflect.

Bernbaum said the 2016 shooting death of Boushie changed the landscape of conversation when it came to topics such as justice and race.

It’s a change he noticed during the numerous interviews he conducted.

“People started to talk with a new kind of raw honesty about the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in our community,” he said. “It was less polite in the sense that people were speaking more from their hearts than from their heads.”

Although Reasonable Doubt explores themes which have created controversy and division within Saskatchewan, Bernbaum said attendees shouldn’t expect any easy answers from the production.

Instead, he said the play is meant to provoke discussion and ask important questions.

“The potential of this kind of theatre is to let a community speak their hearts and advance all of our understandings of an issue a little further,” he said.

“What better way to process a tragedy than to do it together? Theatre at its very nature is about community.”

Although workshop readings of the play were held in early December, Bernbaum said the dates and locations of the production itself is not set.

“I do feel it needs to be presented by someone within the next year or so,” he said. “This is urgent art.”