12 Angry Women - Actor profiles
The first in a series of pieces to introduce the cast
Nancy MacNevin - Juror #11
Nancy MacNevin saw the movie “12 Angry Men” on TV many years ago. She was struck by the raw emotions, the back-and-forth of conflicting opinions, and the variety of characters as a reflection of a diverse society. “That’s why I wanted to audition for 12 Angry Women,” she says.
Nancy downplays her theatrical experience, but she is hardly a novice. A high-school teacher in the Philippines got her to compete in the annual declamation contest. She took first place with an emotional piece about a blind girl lamenting her family’s suffering under the Japanese occupation. She won again next year, and twice more at university. Then, cast in a play as an old maid, she was chosen Best Supporting Actress and given an Honorary Award in a Supporting role. Fast forward to 2016 here on PEI: she got into ACT as the Chinese lady vendor and chorus singer in “Little Shop of Horrors”.
Nancy’s home life includes TV drama (“to enrich my acting — accents, for instance”); the Bible (“for the inner me”); some knitting … “and the summer months are spent on the golf course.”
Juror #11 stands out from the other members in being an immigrant. She comes, it seems, from a repressive east-European regime, and so takes her juror’s role in a democratic justice system as a responsibility and an honour. Nancy hopes that the audience will take a lesson from this play about being judgemental: that prejudice, generalization and narrow personal experience should not warp decision-making, especially in the judicial setting.