Law + Performance?

I had not done anything related to mock trials, law, or performance before college, so joining the Wesleyan Mock Trial is definitely one of the most challenging but meaningful things I have done during my first year.

We had our first mock trial tournament at Penn last October, and I was feeling extremely nervous. My role in the trial was to act as a witness, whose job is to perform a character, answer questions from lawyers, and be confident and calm.

The witness I was acting as was a firefighter. She was a sad character because she had lost her best friend in a fire accident. Before the tournament, I needed to complete a whole direct examination script with my teammate. It was super challenging for me, as I did not know where to start to build such a grieving character. Therefore, I analyzed many sad movies and focused on learning the specific behaviors people tend to display when they feel sad.  I incorporated the behaviors I learned into my script. I designed every answer in a sad way and was very proud of my work after finishing it. 

However, when I showed this script to my teammate and acted it out for the first time, I found problems. Such sadness was so boring. There was no change in emotions, and the whole direct examination did not do a good job to let audiences feel engaged. My teammate told me a successful direct examination script should tell a story of a real person in a natural way rather than in a fake, dramatic, or artificial way. 

Learning from my peers, I redesigned my script. I researched how people act in the courtrooms – people normally control their emotions (they do not normally cry or shout) as a courtroom is a super formal place. Considering the reality, I changed the sentence structures, tones, and words I used in the script and made the sad character more natural. After I finished it, I showed it to my teammates and they said I really did a good job. This was the first mock trial script I did, and it is very important to me as I not only learned what a good script looks like but also learned to receive suggestions from peers and consider the reality.