Play based on homicide victims' families to debut at Chapman University

A student play based on the experiences of families of homicide victims is set to premiere Thursday night at Chapman University.

Set in a church basement support group meeting, the 90-minute play, "Call this Number," highlights various ways that families experience the criminal justice system after a person is killed.

Edward Day, who conducted the research that served as the inspiration and basis of the play, said he found that families often feel left out by the system. Although the research was conducted in Tennessee, Day, the chairman of the sociology department at Chapman, said the families' experiences of grief are universal.

"The families are treated as afterthoughts in a system that focuses mostly on offenders," Day said.

He pointed to an example of a woman finding out that her son had been killed after a police officer knocked on her door late at night. The officer handed her a piece of cardboard with a phone number. The woman dialed the number and realized that it was a line to a homicide detective in the city where her son lived. The play gets its title from that experience, which happens multiple times in the play.

Noreen Raja, a student at Chapman University, co-wrote the play with Day and his wife, Michelle Miller-Day, who is a communications professor.

Raja said the play will also feature newsreels about famous and not-so-famous killings on a projector screen.

"It’s to show the reality behind it all," she said.

The play opens at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Chapman University Memorial Hall theater at 1 University Drive in Orange and runs through Saturday, with shows at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. All performances are free and are followed by a discussion.

--Nicole Santa Cruz

Photo: "Call this Number" poster. Credit: Chapman University