This weekend, the Nicholls Players will be putting on a showing of 12 Angry Jurors.

The cast and crew for this show began working on it at the beginning of the semester, and the first public showing will be this Thursday, Oct. 17. 

12 Angry Jurors is a play about a group of 12 jurors who serve for a case determining the guilt of an inner-city teen. The basis of the plot is the jury debating on whether or not they will give him the death penalty, but one juror spurs doubt into the decision-making. 

The play is set outside of the courtroom, so the audience is only aware of what’s going on in the jury room.

The director for the show, Anna Broussard, decides which plays the Nicholls Players will perform each semester. 

Broussard said she decided on 12 Angry Jurors during the spring semester of 2019 because she wanted a simpler show that was more focused on the acting.

Broussard said that from the director’s perspective, it’s very rewarding to see the final product of a show because she can give feedback, but how well the production goes is really in the students’ hands.

“At the end of the day, they could just walk on stage and ignore everything I’ve said,” Broussard said. “It’s always an exercise in trust.”

Broussard said that the people who are apart of the play did a lot of the heavy lifting for the show since Broussard’s schedule had been so hectic all semester. 

Broussard also said that Devin Griffin, the assistant director, Kirsten Almeida, the stage manager and Loryn Monceaux, the assistant stage manager, who are all students, were crucial in making the show happen.

“I couldn’t have done it without them, like 100 percent couldn’t have done it without them,” Broussard said.

Broussard also said that it’s been nice to see how much the students have learned through being a part of the Nicholls Players.

She said that now that they are making a lot of their own decisions when it comes to the play, she can see how much they’ve learned from a production standpoint.

“You go, ‘I don’t know how I did that, but it happened,’” Broussard said.

The cast of the play consists of 11 students, one community member, and one Nicholls faculty member, who happens to be James Stewart, the department head of the mass communication department.

Almeida, the stage manager, said this is her first time working behind the scenes during a show, as she usually is an actress on the stage. She said it has definitely been an interesting challenge but also a very rewarding experience.

“I decided to take a stab at seeing what things are like from a crew perspective,” Almeida said.

Because the entirety of the play takes place on stage in one continuous scene, Almeida said the nature of her job as stage manager is slightly different than it would usually be, as she is more concerned about what is happening on stage.

“One of the most difficult things about this play is that there is a lot of momentum that needs to be kept up,” Almeida said.

12 Angry Jurors will be shown in Mary and Al Danos Theater on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night at 7 p.m. and on Sunday at 2 p.m.