This new directing course, "Directing: Staging Mass Incarceration/The Deceptive Terrain of Wrongful Conviction," explores practical directing tools while creating original performances that shed light on social justice issues. Students will investigate the basic principles of directing, crafting and meeting with lawmakers, legislators, and exonerated individuals while intensely focusing on case studies of wrongful convictions. Supported by the Innocence Project, students will stage a piece that addresses the deceptive factors leading to wrongful convictions, such as eyewitness misidentification, misapplication of forensic science, official misconduct, false confessions, and coercive plea deals. Since the introduction of DNA testing in the 1980s, the Innocence Project "ha[s] pioneered the use of this groundbreaking technology to scientifically prove innocence. In cases where DNA evidence is absent, we help secure the freedom of wrongfully convicted people by presenting new — and equally convincing — evidence of innocence. To date, Innocence Project has helped free or exonerate more than 200 individuals, most of whom are from communities of color that tend to be more heavily policed, face persistent discrimination, experience poverty at higher rates, and are confronted with many more challenges in the criminal legal system. Altogether, these people have spent more than 3,600 years behind bars." This course is supported by a grant from the Mellon Periclean Faculty Leadership (PFL) Program in the Humanities. It fulfills an elective course requirement for Lang Theater majors and minors. No prerequisite.