The Play Sin a Cardinal Deposed Could Easily Be Pilot for Series on Cable Network, Kay Ebeling, Examiner, March 30, 2009

The Play Sin: a Cardinal Deposed Could Easily Be Pilot for Series on Cable Network

By Kay Ebeling
Examiner
March 30, 2009

http://www.examiner.com/x-1960-LA-City-Buzz-Examiner~y2009m3d30-The-play-SIN-A-Cardinal-Deposed-could-become-pilot-for-series-on-cable-network

Part 2: I hope SIN will end up on HBO or Showtime, not as a special, but as the pilot for a series. Even with all the drama found in the lines from legal docs in the Boston cases and used in the play, every city in America has the same level of drama, deceit, duplicity, and corruption in case files re lawsuits against the Catholic Church for its handling of pedophile priests.

In L.A. Superior Court alone are enough documents to write a series. So I hope the play will end up as: Sin: A Cardinal Deposed-Boston, then Sin: A Cardinal Deposed-Los Angeles, then Peoria, Chicago, Belleville, Dallas-Fort Worth, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Portland Oregon, the entire state of Washington, Portland Maine, every state in New England - need I go on. I’ll be glad to go with any playwright or producer and show them where to find the case files on the terminals in Room 106 of Superior Court downtown.

THE CAST in Thursday night’s show was so realistic. I swear, actor Gary Cole was channeling Jeff Anderson (pictured above right) and Mitchell Garabedian (pictured above left) combined, in the role of a composite of plaintiff attorneys, the character Orson Krieger.

PLUS IT’S GARY COLE, the same actor who delivered so many iconic lines in the movie Office Space, such as: “We're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B,” and “Remember: next Friday is Hawaiian shirt day,” and “So, Peter, are you going to go ahead and have those TPS reports for us this afternoon,.”

Cole has s gotta stay attached to this project, he’s gotta.

FIRST PRODUCED OFF-OFF BROADWAY in 2004, the version of SIN playing in L.A. at the Hayworth Theater is directed by Paul Mazursky, and connected to such an impressive list of actors and creative staff that the play must be headed for major production. This version of SIN: A Cardinal Deposed is staged as a Play Reading with with different actors portraying the roles on different nights.

Thursday’s performance was a fundraiser for SNAP and I had a media-comp ticket, so I didn't eat any of the shrimp.

Performances were stunning. Such as from Wendie Malick whose credits include Confessions of a Shopaholic, The Hill, Law & Order, Frasier. (Whe and another actor are listed in the cast as “Letters”). Malick read the letters, especially of Mary Bernadette Gavreau a woman in Boston who was so persistent, she would not let the matter rest, and wrote several letters to the Cardinal. The actress Wendie Malick was so poignant so truthful.

But, you know what, the letters of Mary Gavreau could be an entire episode on a series based on these crimes in the format of SIN.

I CAN’T EXPRESS how much hope I felt, as one of the crime victims, to see this production that might finally help get the truth out to mainstream audiences about these serial felonies committed against American families. It takes intelligent actors writers and crew to see the importance of this material. Just like it seems to be the smart people, non-victims, who drop out of the Church and become advocates for survivors.

ALSO IN LAST Thursday”S Performance actor Dan Lauria was on the other side of the stage from Malick, reading another set of Letters. Lauria also is a familiar face with a long list of credits Looking very much like a Boston tough guy, Lauria had all the passion of a parent of a survivor, or a survivor himself. ALL the actors seemed to want to see the play move on as a project, not just for themselves, but to get the material to mainstream audiences.

The play, Sin: A Cardinal Deposed displays, through the questioning of disposed Cardinal Bernard Law, the techniques used by ALL American bishops to frustrate our legal process and prevent justice in these crimes: serial felonies, committed by bishops.

Bernard Law around time of testimony

I'm sure documents from the 510 cases against the LA Archdiocese that settled in 2007 can provide enough material to write a whole season of SIN: A Cardinal Deposed episodes.

AS I WATCHED SIN: A Cardinal Deposed last Thursday, I felt like like I was watching the beginning of something that was going to become very big.

ONE LAST NOTE: About the gobbledegook (or superfluous language used to obfuscate the truth). Here are some quotes that I was able to jot down in the dark of the theater, lines emitted by Bruce Davison the actor playing Bernard Law: “An expectation was understood by the assessment” and “I do not have - really I don't really personally get involved.” Since every line of dialogue is taken from legal documents from The People Versus the Catholic Church in Boston 2002, verbatim words from legal documents, Sin: A Cardinal Deposed truly displays how criminal was and is the behavior of Catholic hierarchy.

ANOTHER FINAL NOTE

AS A WRITER who has been trying for about fourteen years to find a way to get the breadth of these crimes committed by the Catholic Church out to the mainstream public, I watched the play from the back row. This was an unusually supportive audience, about half full of others like me who are victims of these crime. Since I’ve been writing about Clergy Cases I have written some of the longest run-on sentences of my life, so I wondered about the technique of using case documents.

WAIT A MINUTE I'm the original Document Diver from the L.A. Cases (Read City of Angels 3) so if anyone knows how much passion is in the documents, it's me. Wish they'd hurry and finish redecorating Room 106 of Superior Court, so I can go diving again.