**Research Firsts Exhibition: Image and accompanying text by Kfir Lapid-Mashall**
![sequence of many images showing actors on an empty stage except for a single flipchart][1]
Putting myself on trial was inevitable. If my research was to introduce the form of Judicial Theatre, its initial theatrical experiment had to originate within. Performing the role of Jephthah, the biblical commander who sacrificed his daughter to win a war, I invited Theatre Studies students and researchers to interrogate the lawfulness of Jephthah’s actions.
Yet Jephthah was not tried alone; I was too. As the cross-examinations scrutinized Jephthah, they were profoundly evaluating the possibility of Judicial Theatre to generate political art through enduring adversarial exchange about masculinity, militancy, gender-based violence, and those doomed to pay the price of war.
[1]: https://mfr.osf.io/export?url=https://osf.io/download/x3ew9/?direct=&mode=render&format=2400x2400.jpeg
