Count: Stories from America’s Death Row

Tuesday, June 17, 2025 @ 3:00pm

McCarter Theatre Center (Berlind Rehearsal Room)
91 University Place, Princeton, NJ 08540

Berlind Rehearsal Room

During a single day on death row, six men unpack their personal inheritances of violence, racism, mental illness, poverty, and surprising love. Based on years of conversation and writing with men sentenced to death or sentenced as children to life without parole, COUNT invites us into a stark florescent otherworld where the condemned struggle to revision what it means to live fully in the face of scheduled death. As we join their lively, difficult,  and ultimately affirming search for a life well-lived, we begin to wonder who is disposable, who counts, and what justice means when the blindfold is our own.

Count: Stories from America’s Death Row is a production brought to you through a partnership between the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary and Chesney Snow of Princeton University. The Center for Barth Studies is a research center that exists to provide leading resources on the theology and legacy of Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968). Founded in 1997, the center hosts programs and events, provides research resources, and facilitates constructive theological conversation for engagement with the Christian theological tradition and its public significance today.  

Count: Stories from America’s Death Row is hosted as part of the 2025 Karl Barth Conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary this week on June 15–18 titled “The Incarcerated God: Thinking with and Beyond Barth on the Prison System,” co-organized with the Prison Studies Program at Duke Divinity School, the Calvin Prison Initiative at Calvin College, and the Partnership for Religion and Education in Prisons (PREP) at Drew Theological School. In addition to being one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century, Barth was a person with a criminal record who also served as a volunteer prison chaplain for a decade of his life. This year’s conference examines Barth’s theological insights in relation to incarceration, justice, and liberation, fostering a critical and constructive dialogue on addressing systemic oppression. To learn more about the conference, please visit https://www.ptsem.edu/kbc25

Run Time

3:00 PM show: 100 minutes 

7:00 PM show: 130 minutes