Never Fight a Shark in Water: The Wrongful Conviction of Gregory Bright
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Saturday, September 21, 2024
7 p.m.–8:30 p.m.
520 Royal Street
Based entirely on the words of Gregory Bright
Performed by Gregory Bright; written and directed by Lara Naughton
Suggested price: $25 | Minimum: $5
HNOC presents Never Fight a Shark in Water: The Wrongful Conviction of Gregory Bright, a one-man documentary stage play based entirely on the words and recollections of Gregory Bright. Bright spent 27½ years in prison for a murder he did not commit. The play, written by Lara Naughton and performed by Bright himself, tells the remarkable story of Bright’s wrongful conviction and exoneration.
This program is presented in conjunction with HNOC's new exhibition Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration, on view until January 19, 2025.
About the Work
On Halloween weekend, 1975, a 15-year-old was killed in the Calliope Projects in New Orleans. Gregory Bright, 20 years old at the time, was arrested along with a co-defendant he had never met before, charged with 2nd degree murder, wrongfully convicted, and sentenced to life in Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola without the possibility of parole or suspension of sentence. Bright, who was illiterate when he entered prison, taught himself to read, then taught himself the law, getting his appeals all the way to the State Supreme Court before a lawyer from the Innocence Project New Orleans stepped in to help unravel the case. It took Gregory Bright 27½ years to prove his innocence and come home.
Says Bright, “The odds were against me, but it’s like my main man Wing Ding used to say when we was in prison: Never fight a shark in water; get him on land and you got him. Well, it took me 27 1/2 years but I finally got that shark on land.”
Never Fight a Shark in Water explores the universal experiences of anger, forgiveness, and compassion. It exposes the criminal justice system failures that lead to wrongful convictions and challenges us to rethink our understanding of freedom.