Barring some seriously bad behavior, the legal system isn’t usually something with which the typical high school student is well acquainted.
Don’t tell that to Franklin Regional students Isaac Eaton and Aerin Aranovich, also known as Juror No. 3 and Juror No. 8 in the high school Thespian Club’s upcoming production of “Twelve Angry Jurors.”
The title of the 1954 teleplay, “Twelve Angry Men,” was adjusted for the adaptation to accommodate more diverse casts.
The play centers on a group of jurors arguing over a young man’s fate in a criminal trial. It has been staged and filmed countless times, engaging audiences in a debate about the nature of criminal intent, people’s inherent biases and the importance of a legal system that requires a dozen people to agree on a verdict before sentencing someone to prison.
“I’m taking AP Government right now,” said Aranovich, 18, a Franklin Regional senior. “I’ve gone so in-depth — I’ve read the Constitution multiple times, and you start to get a good sense of the legal system, why we have jury trials, why you need a convicting vote to be unanimous, the difference between criminal and civil court, all of that.”
Eaton took the same course last year and read the play on his own in 2020.
“I really fell in love with it, and I’ve been wanting to do it all my years in high school,” he said. “Going back to the play after having taken AP Government, I think it’s an even richer, more valuable text.”
Eaton’s Juror No. 3 is hardheaded in the play, convinced from the outset that the defendant is guilty.
“What’s really impressive is none of the jurors have names, but they all have a plot trajectory and their own character arc that changes in some way as the story goes along,” he said. “I think that’s just so wildly interesting.”
Sophomore Landon Spears, 15, plays the guard who remains with the jury during deliberations. This is his first time in a Thespian Club production.
“It’s been great to be around these amazing people, learning and watching from the sidelines, learning how to get your lines out when someone else is talking, or just memorizing whose lines come before yours,” he said.
Eaton said the biggest challenge is that none of the actors walks offstage during the entire production. They enter the jury room and remain onstage until the play ends.
“All the other plays we’ve done up to this point, there are some scenes where you’re offstage,” he said. “You get at least a few small breaks. But this is all very much one long scene. Without that downtime, it’s really important that we’re all locked into what’s going on at any given moment.”
“Twelve Angry Jurors” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. May 1 and 2, with a 2 p.m. matinee May 3 at the Franklin Regional Senior High School auditorium, 3200 School Road, Murrysville.
Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students and seniors. They will be available at the door; no advance tickets will be sold.