Is the opera blatantly anti-death penalty?
Not at all. No more than the film of Dead Man Walking was. I think a true work of art is one that brings people to a deeper level of reflection. You know, William Faulkner, when he got the Nobel Prize for literature, said that the only thing worth writing about is the conflict in the human heart. True art, I think, brings you both sides of a conflict. Then people go into their own hearts to search it out. The question, as Joe Mantello phrased it, is we see a murder and then we see an execution – is that essentially the same thing or is it different? You’ve taken this on as a life journey. Why? Well, you choose or you get chosen. You know, I didn’t seek to do this. I got involved with poor people and the St. Thomas Housing Projects in New Orleans, and I got an invitation to write to somebody on death row and then I walked with him to the electric chair on the night of April 5, 1984. I became a witness. I realized people don’t have a way of seeing this, people don’t have a way of being b
