“Imagine everything you did between the years of 1976 and 1992,” says Sunny Jacobs (Adele Robbins) before giving the audience a full ten seconds of silence to consider their life histories: graduating college, getting married, having children, raising children, etc. Or, in the case of Stanford students, being born and going to Stanford. But then again, Lively Arts performances are most typically attended by a middle-aged and over crowd anyway.

“The Exonerated,” written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen and performed by the Actors’ Gang, is an off-Broadway play touring the nation that explores the lives of six wrongfully convicted death row inmates and their victimization at the hands of a flawed criminal justice system. It fuses art, politics and reality, resulting in a rough production that succeeds in moving its audience, creating political awareness and doing justice to the courageous lives it depicts.

“The Exonerated” opens with Delbert Tibbs (Harold Surratt) swaggering across the stage, spouting esoteric platitudes with a poetic bravado, “If you dream in this world, it is dangerous.” Blank and Jensen structure the play so that it concentrates on each of the six characters individually, cutting between their stories several times. To bridge these scenes, essentially monologues, the character of Delbert serves as a narrator, responsible for cohering the play while delivering insightful thematic reflections.

However, as a self-described “spiritually free hippie child of the 60s and 70s”, Delbert is too whimsical as an anchor in a play of such magnitude. His incessant wailings of “It is not easy to be a poet,” detract from the momentum and believability of the play. As a result, cutting between the individual stories is abruptly awkward. Each character then carries the unnecessary burden of reestablishing this force each time he/she appears on stage.

Of all six stories represented in “The Exonerated”, Sunny Jacobs’ is the most powerfully resonant. Sunny exudes an unceasing vigor for life that is extraordinary considering her circumstances.

There are many beautiful, inspiring scenes throughout “The Exonerated.” It celebrates the perseverance of the indomitable human spirit, speaking to the power of hope. As Delbert says, “If I internalize the pain and fear, I’d be executed already.” “The Exonerated” reminds its audience that these criminals are not merely characters, but people who have been forced into a living death. They have triumphed to be free once again, but they must still “learn how to feel again.” Delbert describes his struggles: “in prison, you can’t feel so much, so now I need to learn how to feel again. I have to practice feeling, practice how to be human again.”

Despite all that it accomplishes, “The Exonerated” can be too oppressive - as expected - in transmitting its message. However, it does so in a manner that borders on manipulation. As an audience member, I often felt like I was being lectured at, that I was being told how to think and react. Blank and Jensen instantly elevate the characters to martyrdom the moment they step on stage. Conversely, they easily vilify the representatives of the criminal justice system, cheapening them to two-dimensional stereotypes, such as the unfairly obstinate judge, the ignorant hick cops or the careless ineffectual lawyers. Even the exonerated characters themselves frequently feel too removed from reality, conveniently dramatized for the purposes of theatre.

Instead of being trusted to come to my own conclusion about the death penalty, Blank and Jensen mercilessly pounded it into me. “The Exonerated” would have been far more powerful if it had provoked you into thinking for yourself, rather than thinking for you. As the play ended and the lights came up, quite a few audience members immediately stood for the requisite standing ovation. I remained in my seat. Yes, I had been moved at many points, but I still felt cheated by the writers. By not participating, I was keenly aware of the guilt implicit in not enthusiastically applauding the play. The engineered sanctity of “The Exonerated” had pervaded even the applause itself.