‘Chessman’ explores crucial moment for Brown family, California death penalty

Director Buck Busfield, center, goes over a scene from “Chessman” with actors Elisabeth Nunziato, as Bernice Brown, left, and Phil Cowan, as Gov. Pat Brown, at the B Street Theatre in Sacramento on Oct. 6, 2016. (Randall Benton/The Sacramento Bee)

Buck Busfield is pondering the finer points of one of the most important phone calls in California political history.

It was Feb. 18, 1960, the eve of the long-delayed execution of Caryl Chessman. A 21-year-old Jerry Brown, recently departed from the seminary and now a student at UC Berkeley, called his father, then-Gov. Pat Brown, asking him to grant a reprieve for the condemned inmate.

Across the world, millions awaited the fate of a man they had taken up as the poster boy for ending the death penalty. The freighted decision tore at Pat Brown, whose Catholic faith taught him that execution was immoral.

At the moment, however, Busfield is more concerned about the type of telephone Jerry would have used. During a recent rehearsal for “Chessman,” a new play about the case debuting this week at the B Street Theatre, director Busfield asked his stage manager whether they could hang a phone on the wall for the pivotal scene.

“When I was in college, which wasn’t that long after this, we only had one phone on the wall in the hallway,” he said. It’s his job to consider these details, so the audience can forget the distractions and focus on the story. “We’ll get letters: ‘Well, the play was great, but that phone was wrong.’ ”

That is perhaps among the lesser challenges for the creative team behind “Chessman,” a side project of political consultant Joe Rodota. The production attempts to capture the international, O.J. Simpson-like frenzy and divisiveness that surrounded Chessman for more than a decade, while also asking the audience to look beyond its cast of iconic California figures to a family split by a deeply personal, ethical dilemma.

It also strives to keep a neutral distance and a historical sheen on one of California’s most inflammatory political issues, just as voters are weighing two November ballot measures on capital punishment: one to abolish it and one to expedite the process.

“This is not a documentary for or against the death penalty,” Rodota said.

So how did a former aide to Republican Govs. Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger come to write a play about arguably the greatest political struggle of one of the state’s most enduring Democratic leaders? Read more >>>