Reasonable Doubt, livre ebook

• First produced in January 2020 at Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon
• The music by Lancelot Knight is critical for giving space to reflect due to the hard truths being spoken.
• Joel Bernbaum already had fifty interviews collected for a play on race relations when Colten Boushie was murdered, which changed the conversations he was having—he found that people were speaking with a new raw kind of honesty—and thus informed the format of the play.

Rural Saskatchewan
ROSE and RALPH, 70s, CAUCASIAN

ROSE:(lip smack) Predominately a lot of German people here. Uhh... but in the last while we've had... peo-other nationalities moving in. We've got ahh... restaurant downtown that's operated by a Chinese lady, Uh... the Red Bull is now operated by people from Korea, South Korea. And uh... yeah so and we've-we've got some Native people living here, y'know. They're either adopted kids or-

RALPH: VERY few though!

(Speaking at the same time)RALPH: Jus-Just the small small thing. And-and there's no reserves around here. ROSE: Very few yeah! There is-is a few yeah. Yeah.

RALPH: We should make mention, ORIGINALLY this area was preDOMINANTly German with a-wida nice mixture of Ukrainians. They called the offsprings Gerainians. (laughs) Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh. But-but now as Rose had mentioned because the influx of new people and affordable housing. Uh..there's a lot of…

ROSE: Intermarriages! We have a little bit of everything here right now. Well intermarriages you know. The women are Native and their children are Native... living with a white. There's about three-three Native families here in town. That I can think of-

RALPH: PARTIAL Natives! (laughs) Heh Heh.

A Grade 5 Classroom
SAM, 11, CAUCASIAN
RUBY, 11, CAUCASIAN

SAM: The whole uhm whole Colten Boushie Gerald Stanley thing uhm... I don't really have a side exactly uhm yeah. Colten Boushie was-was an-and some friends were really drunk and then they went- they were going around an making mischief and then Gerald Stanley I guess was trying to protect his family and-an shot Colten Boushie.

RUBY: I think skin colour DID matter but it SHOULDN'T have mattered. Because ehm like I dunno if it was a white man, he might not have been shot because a lot o- that's another stereotype, a lot of indig-indigenous people like ON the streets are... assumed to be dangerous.

KAT, 11, CAUCASIAN

KAT: I was... listening as my dad and his girlfriend fought about it. Uhm... cause they both disagreed about if he was guilty or not and uhm... my dad was saying that he wasn't and that he was just doing it to protect his home and family and because they WERE trying to steal something from him, well that's what he said that they were trying to steal like his truck or his quad or something an his girlfriend said well, if someone was coming for your quad would you have... the guts to shoot him? And he said Yeah! I paid a lot of money for that!

Rural Saskatchewan

RALPH: This will stand out as one of the four uh... significant trials ever held in this province. And of course, the first one was Louis R-Riel way back when and then it was Colin Thatcher uh... Robert Latimer and then this one. And uh... y'know I-I didn't realize that I was f-front row seat to such a historic trial. You had to shake your head once in a while to realize this is the real thing. History was unfolding it-itself before your eyes. What we found interesting in fact I'm going to share this with you ahh… is that I had Gerald Stanley's father phoned me here a couple days ago. Friday evening.

ROSE: Well you're jumping ahead now.

RALPH: Yes! I'm jumping ahead! He phoned me to thank ahh me an-an Rose and our son that was attending our family for supporting them. But here is something that he shared with me and that is that after the first couple days of trial.

ROSE: Is that to be shared I wonder?

RALPH: I think so! Because I mean you will decide how to decipher it. Is that... the Star Phoenix wasn't doing justice to the coverage. He said-

(Speaking at the same time)

ROSE: He felt it was one-sided.

RALPH: He said-Very one sided!

(Overlap ends)

RALPH: INITIALLY came out that these uhh.... Native, I think we're supposed to call them aboriginals.

ROSE: Indigenous.

RALPH: Indigenous, YES! Indigenous. Uh... youth! Were innocently swimming they had a flat tire, they called in for help and he took a gun and shot em. Ah… this-this was uh… y'know the message that was out there. And when uh the-they came up... to testify by this time uhh they... they were telling, spilling their guts, they were telling it EXACTLY what happened. And yet... it seemed like the next paper didn't cover any of this.