CHAPEL HILL -- Deep Dish Theater Company’s sixth season continues with The Exonerated by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen and directed by Tony Lea. It will be performed Thursday, October 26 to Saturday, November 18.

Based on true stories of individuals who were sentenced to death and subsequently found innocent, first-time playwrights Blank and Jensen traveled the country, interviewing 60 former death row inmates, 20 in person, and collecting court transcripts and public records. The numerous hours of tapes and hundreds of pages of transcripts they collected were slowly workshopped into a staged play focusing on the true stories of six real-life death row inmates.

After readings in New York and at the United Nations, the play premiered in Los Angeles in 2002 with Tim Robbins’ Actors’ Gang, and was later staged Off-Broadway in New York. The New York Times called it “The #1 play of the year... intense and deeply affecting...”

Director Tony Lea has staged a number of memorable Deep Dish productions including last season’s Marvin’s Room and previous productions of A Moon for the Misbegotten, Holiday, and The Game of Love and Chance.

“When I first read The Exonerated, I found it almost unbearably moving,” said Lea. “The play tells the true stories of people who had large chunks of their lives wrongly taken away from them by our criminal justice system. With varying degrees of success, they are trying to move past the emotional and physical scars left by their incarceration. Yet despite the pain and darkness, there is humor and grace in the piece.”

During the course of the production, Deep Dish will collect donations that will be sent to The Exonerated Fund, set up by the playwrights to provide support to freed death row inmates. Since there are few resources available to them as they return to society, there is no automatic restitution once they are released, and employers are reluctant to hire them, resuming a normal life is often impossible.

The cast of The Exonerated includes John Harris, Eric Swenson, Dante Walker, Lamont Reed, David Ring and Marcia Edmundson, who portray the six exonerated, as well as Jane McNeil, Sherida McMullan, John Paul Middlesworth and Ryan Brock, appearing as a supporting cast as judges, police officers, defense attorneys, prosecutors, and spouses.

Paul Stiller is designing the set, Miranda Morales is designing costumes, Elizabeth Grimes-Droessler is designing lights, Devra Thomas is designing props, and Eric Davis is designing sound. The production’s stage manager is Lauren Tannenbaum.

Audience discussions, featuring a variety of guest speakers, will follow most of the Thursday and Sunday performances during the run. The Deep Dish Book Selection for this production is "Arthur and George," Julian Barnes’ novel about a real-life miscarriage of justice, and a discussion of the book, free and open to the public, will be led by David Carr and Evelyn Daniel prior to the performance on Thursday, November 16.

Deep Dish is located in Chapel Hill's University Mall, located on Estes Drive and US 15-501. Thursday through Saturday performances begin at 8 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. There will also be a special early show at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 15. For reservations and information, call 968-1515. Tickets for all performances are $16, $14 for seniors, and $12 for students. Thursday, November 2 is "Cheap Dish Night," when all tickets will be $7; no advance reservations will be taken for that performance.