I am really delighted to be a part of a small but enthusiastic group of people who will be presenting the play The Trial of Ben Hall written by Forbes solicitor Dominic Williams. To be held on Friday, 9 May – 188 years after the notorious Hall was born and 160 years since his death on 5 May. The play will be presented in the former St Andrews Church at 6pm.
Dominic’s play was originally written for the inaugural Ben Hall Festival and rewritten for Law Week in 1986. Ben Hall was of course shot dead without a trial and is buried at Forbes Cemetery.
Forbes Shire Council Heritage Advisory Committee were the inspiration for bringing Ben Hall back to commemorate 160 since his death. Several other committee members and community volunteers will be in the play. Ben Hall will be played by Lewis Wilde.
We will also be encouraging our audience to fully participate in the evening. We need you to react to the good and bad, to the police bias and inequity in the court process. It will be a great night out for the whole family to enjoy.
Free tickets are available on 123tix. Due to the space there will only be 100 tickets available. Tea and refreshment will be served while the jury deliberates – no one knows the outcome of the judgment until the night. The cast has prepared for both guilty and not guilty findings.
I encourage everyone to come along and find out the imagined past if Ben Hall had been given a trial and discover more about our notorious Mr Hall, who was in fact the first person in Australia to be declared a bushranger.
In Dominic’s words, “…Ben Hall whose name continues to grow in Australian legend as a folklore hero, more wronged against than wrong himself. I trust the Trial of Ben Hall will not only entertain and educate but lead to a better understanding of the enigma that was Ben Hall – it being the trial that Ben Hall never received. (April 1986).