The Chicago Conspiracy Trial

Reality is stranger than fiction when seven 1960s radicals refuse to behave in Judge Julius Hoffman's courtroom. Based on actual trial transcripts and starring a cast of top Chicago actors, this play centers on events following the protests and riots during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

©1993 Peter Goodchild (P)1995 L.A. Theatre Works, All Rights Reserved.

Reseñas de la Crítica

• New York Festivals Award, 1993

"This is drama documentary at its finest." (The Sunday Times of London)
"A brilliant reconstruction of the bizarre trial." (The Sunday Telegraph)

Outstanding work that gives a sense of the time

This 2-hour abridgement of the run-up to the Chicago-7 trial & pieces of the trial transcript is an outstanding work of theatre that brings the listener into the actual events in a way no other medium or text could. The story is woven in such a way that you get the sense of what it was like to be in the courtroom ... as part of the prosecution team, the defense team & defendants, the judge & the jury, since all of those points-of-view are represented. The material has a slight pro-defendant bias, in part because it evaluates the event from a politico-historical perspective, rather than a narrow legal perspective. But that slight bias is clear in the telling & should just be in the back of listeners' minds as they listen. This is the best of the three "trial" audios by the LA Theatre Workshop (the others are on the Scopes & the Pentagon Papers cases), because it is the longest & the one most focused on what happened in the courtroom itself. Well worth the money.