But Scott Jones went off script in the court room during the reading of his victim impact statement and spoke aloud what was not written down and approved. Further he broke the rules by addressing his assailant directly. 

Jones said, “Nothing can justify what you’ve done…but I forgive you.”

I Forgive You, the play, is also an example of verbatim theatre, a kind of research-creation theatre that works from transcripts of audio recordings of oral storytelling and in-depth interviews, usually with the goal of bringing to light social injustice in order to foster healing for the individuals who have been harmed, and a wider healing in the form of societal reform. The words of survivors are verbatim in this kind of theatre. As Sarah Garton Stanley, the production dramaturge and the author of the foreword of the published play writes: “Every word belongs to Scott.”   

Verbatim theatre uses only the spoken words gathered through interviews – the words are exactly as they are recorded – and then the content is shaped or curated through a rigorous, creative editing process that examines an exhaustive number of transcribed interviews and oral storytelling, sometimes examining several versions of the same moment in a story, the same detail or emotional response. This process shapes the material, provides cohesion and context, as well as plot  – or the sense of building, rising waves of emotion, sensation, and revelation, all the while tracing the logical but often hidden trajectories of the subconscious as it works through trauma to find meaning.   

This practice preserves the authenticity of the spoken word, alive with the immediacy of thought and spontaneous insight, the truth that leaks through the way we speak, as well as what we say. The use of verbatim speech privileges the rough, rather than polished, complete sentence. It privileges the fragment, the hesitation, reformulation, uncensored utterance, as though there is as much truth in how we make sense, as in the sense we make. The telling of the story, the arrival, its landing or journey to a cohesive shape, a sense of unity, or coming together, is as important as the story itself. This kind of telling has a meta-quality – a lowering of the fourth wall of theatre. At one point in the script, Jones jokingly comments that he is surprised how many times he uses the word ‘like’ in the transcripts. 

This approach to writing is deeply connected with the physicality of speech: how the breath touches against teeth and tongue, how rhythms are shaped by corporality, the pulse, the catch at the back of the throat – all the hesitancies, the reiterations, re-phrasings, the casting about for whatever captures most accurately a remembered sensation, or the quality of an emotion in a given moment, or what literary critic Roland Barthes, in The Pleasure of Text,has described when talking about a kind of “writing aloud” which searches for, he says, “…the pulsional incidents, the language lined with flesh, a text where we can hear the grain of the throat….” Or in other words, how words come from the body and are formed by it. The chicken and egg of which comes first, language or thought, and which is closer to the truth, speech or writing. How our bodies (not just our brains) shape what we think. 

This mode of storytelling – verbatim theatre – is particularly apt for playwriting and for the writing of this play in particular, because it is a story about music and a choir. Scott Jones is a musician and conductor. It is also a coming together as community through the act of forgiveness and through the making of art and beauty, in all its physicality. It is, at the same time, about a horrific physical pain caused by a violence that is both exceptionally brutal and individual in its attack, but also shaped by the overarching societal structures of toxic masculinity, poverty, class disparity, homophobia, and the prevalent, (especially in this present moment) ubiquitous willingness to hate. 

In the face of this opaque obdurate hatred, Jones emerges as a fierce social justice warrior for the perhaps most human act of love and kindness we have the power to bestow: forgiveness. Jones and Chafe, through this play are shaping an argument for forgiveness that is in itself unspeakably beautiful and transformative. Perhaps what is most difficult and brave to face in this document, is the understanding the reader comes to, just as Jones comes to it, that the work of forgiveness is never finished. It is ongoing, it is a vacillating and fragile enterprise that Jones continues to believe in, continues to fight for. 

The idea of using the speech of those directly affected by the trauma of violence gives a unique kind of agency to the survivor. The rawness of spoken speech and oral storytelling produces a trust in the listener, the idea that some things come directly from the heart, though of course there is every level of artistry, as the foreword mentions, employed in this play. 

There are layers upon layers of storytelling here. The interview questions to which Jones has responded shape the story, the editing massages what is the rough-hewn skin of honesty throughout, the honesty of the human voice, and there is the layer and artistry of the  performances of the actors, the haunting music of Sigur Rós, and the publication of the play, where the spoken word is translated from transcription into a final text. 

Here is perhaps the appropriate time to mention I have not seen a production of the play. I am writing about the text. And I am here to say it is a masterful work of art, just as it is. An iteration of the final product that allows the reader unique access to the process of creation.  Every published play is a guide or set of directions for the people who will bring it to life on the stage. This publication is written in such a way, I almost feel I have seen it, experienced it in the flesh. But I am aware there is another layer of experience of this story I hope to have access to in the future. Or as the old stage adage goes, leave them wanting more. 

Jones describes the moment in court when he tells his assailant that he, Jones, forgives him, going against the rules of the victim impact statement, speaking without script, but with immediacy and honesty, an utterance that was not yet transcribed, only a verbal utterance in the moment, made of breath and strength of conviction. 

Then there is this: “But when I forgave him, I remember, on his side of the room, here was a, like an….emotional inhalation. A gasp.” 

Of course, it makes sense that it is an inhalation of breath the authors of this play describe in this moment. 

Jones himself, who acts in the play, interrupts the actor who says this, and reformulates: “Not a gasp. It wasn’t a gasp.”

The actor responds, re-adjusts, seeks, stammers, struggles for exactly the right description of what was heard in the courtroom from the assailant’s side of the room. From, presumably, the assailant’s friends and family.  And the actor agrees with Scott: “No, not a gasp. It wasn’t a gasp. Gasp is too strong a word. But it was like…it was felt. It was felt in the room.” 

Given that Scott Jones survived a murder attempt and the tremendous physical, emotional and psychological trauma that follows, is surviving these horrors still, this struggle to describe the particular utterance of the collective, is like the musical notation for softness in a score, a pianississimo, the softness of a note, in this instance a collective breath, this human articulation of astonishment and recognition of bravery, of generosity, this revelation or unveiling of a pathway to forgiveness for us all, the agency of forgiving, being able to forgive  – the measure of a sound, its quality and timbre, it’s physicality, the relief of it, the visionary hope made visible in Jones’ promise of forgiveness, seems important to get right. And like everything else in this play, Scott Jones and Robert Chafe get it right. 

Lisa Moore is the author of the bestselling novels Alligator, February, and Caught; the story collections Open and Something for Everyone; and a young adult novel, Flannery. Her books have been finalists for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, CBC Canada Reads, the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Man Booker Prize. Lisa lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.