The Innocents to Hold Residency Highlighting Music and Advocacy at Wilmington College

WILMINGTON, Ohio (January 28, 2026)—The Innocents will share their social justice advocacy through performance art during a visit to Wilmington College on Feb. 9 and 10. The duo of John Lane and Allen Otte delves deeply into the most current issues surrounding the core subject of wrongful imprisonment and exoneration.

The composers/performers comprising The Innocents will hold a two-day residency at the College that includes interaction with the campus and a pair of evening programs open to the public. They will screen the 2022 documentary film, The Innocents, on Feb. 9, at 7 p.m., in The Meriam R. Hare Quaker Heritage Center Gallery located in WC’s Boyd Cultural Arts Center. The next evening, Feb. 10, in the gallery, will feature a performance by The Innocents, followed by a talkback with members Lane and Otte.

Using a variety of found-object and home-made instruments, electronic soundscapes and spoken texts, Lane and Otte have devised a one-hour, dramatic soundscape comprised of at least 17 individual tableaus. These explore various aspects of the issues surrounding wrongful imprisonment and exoneration in the American criminal justice system: mistaken identity, incarceration, injustice, politics, psychology and resilience.

“We have embraced our role as advocates through the realization that our work cuts to the emotional core of the human experience surrounding these issues,” they stated on their website. 

The texts spoken in the work are derived from a variety of sources: various historic prison diaries/poetry, interrogation transcripts, Google autocomplete, Thomas Jefferson, Jax (a female prisoner in the Oklahoma State Prison system), Mark Godsey (former New York prosecutor and author of Blind Injustice) and captured Chicago police scan chatter, among many other sources. They noted that, in an effort to make their work relevant, each major performance has originally crafted tableaus (texts and or music) that directly resonate with the local communities in which they are performing. 

“Our experience in these environments is that a non-partisan socio-political issue, presented not as didactic instruction but rather as creative art delivered with the highest level of expertise and commitment, elicits from these younger audiences stimulating, thought-provoking comments and questions, demonstrating palpable engagement with the issue,” they said.

Some of the pieces are meant to be uncomfortable – a bit too long, momentarily chaotic and confusing, difficult to understand, even provocative. Others are simple and direct: melodic and in familiar genres, lyrics recited to percussive accompaniment. “Working on an emotional level, our idea is to shine a light on this subject—as if through a prism—in hopes that various aspects surrounding it may briefly come into focus for each of us,” they added.

Article Submitted by Wilmington College