Page 47 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

38 Graham White

particular instance, the latter might include the personal stories,
representations and mediations of the members of the public present in the
room as well as the more serious, complex and resonant stories which the
courtroom explored in the lives and attitudes of those on the stand.
The particular mix of the formal, legal environment and the informality
introduced both in the daily setting-up of this environment and in the frequent
breaks in proceedings drew attention to the significance of ‗offstage‘ social
interactions – a feature registered in previous theatrical modellings of
Tribunals and legal processes such as those staged at the Tricycle Theatre in
Kilburn, London, in the past ten years, [Norton-Taylor] where the replaying of
such interaction as part of the verisimilitude of the production has been a
prominent feature. However, one of the most striking elements of such
‗offstage‘ interaction in the social environment of the court, and one which has
not generally been a part of the Tricycle‘s re-staging of such events, were the
attitudes and behaviours of the figures populating the public gallery. On my
own first visit, the gallery was peopled by a range of visitors, including an
elderly couple who had brought along a tourist map of Paris to follow
evidence, various individuals who discussed the trial, as long standing
colleagues, with mutual friends in the gallery, as well as a number of people
who appeared to be watching with a professional or scholarly interest. A man
in the third row of the gallery was dressed in a suit, dapper, well-presented,
albeit with DIANA and DODI written across his face in blue pan-stick.
Outside the courtroom a heated conversation went on between a young man
with a mass of curly hair and an older man with a bag full of papers about the
reasons for a piece of evidence not being given on the stand. In the breaks
between sittings the formal boundaries between communities in the court
dissolved further. Here it was possible to witness a member of the public
audience debate the interpretation of evidence with a journalist, to watch
another discuss their apparent fame with newcomers in the gallery, or to
follow the same individual approvingly patting the back of a discomfited ex-
security chief after a day‘s hard work in the witness box. To queue for a public
gallery ticket was to briefly become part this group, a community who were
often looked at with amusement or bemusement by legal professionals on their
way to work in the surrounding streets, or with a degree of scorn by the
members of the public walking past the accusatory placard held by one figure
outside the front entrance of the building each day.