Beyond Bars: The Shakespeare Prison Project in Wisconsin

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Hand it to Jonathan Shailor to not sit around while program big wigs decide whether or not he can go back inside with his important theatre work behind bars (See "Are You Kidding Me?" in the Archives).  He launched The Shakespeare Prison Project: Beyond Bars on January 13th, 2013, at the Rita Tallent Pickens Center for the Arts and Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

What is perhaps most touching to me is not that former prisoner, Nick Leair, joined guest actors onstage to perform scenes from The Tempest and Henry IV, Part 2, but that is daughter, Ally not only saw him perform in Beyond Bars this week but in The Tempest  when he was incarcerated.

Here Leair is with his daughter now and before he was released

    

Shailor wrote:  "Ally joined us on stage during the talkback. I asked her what her main impression of her Dad was back in 07 when she saw him perform for the first time. She said, 'He looked happy.'  Then she proudly took the stage and read the prologue from one of her Dad's favorite plays: Romeo and Juliet.  Two other former…Shakespeare Project participants attended the program and joined in the discussion. All of them are doing well–reconnected with family, employed or in school. They credit their experience with The Shakespeare Project as an important element in the building of new identities and productive lives."

This reminds me of how much we give and get from the people we work with behind bars.  Next week I will be seeing a woman I worked with over twenty years ago at Framingham Women's Prison.  How much the connections endure and this is because the work allows people to dig deep into themselves and to learn something new be it about themselves and/or about the world.  Them, for sure; us, the teachers, as well.  As I said in Shakespeare Behind Bars, the performance of the Bard offers prisoners access to a world many never thought was part of their lives.  If one can tackle Shakespeare, one can tackle anything.

I encourage blog readers to contact the WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS SECRETARY EDWARD WALL AND TELL HIM THAT YOU SUPPORT THIS WORK!  

PHONE: 608-240-5055  and EMAIL: edward.wall@wi.gov

From Behind Bars Poet Bloggers Find Voice

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Visit Boston Magazine'sand read my blog about poets behind bars who are sending their words into cyberspace.  It's part of a three-part series about writing and art blogs from prisoners.  The talent behind bars!

"Prisoners have long written poetry from inside the prison walls. For incarcerated men and women—as for all who have the urge to write poetry—Robert Frost’s words ring true: the poem “begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” Poetry is the need to express what’s locked up inside, and for the prisoner, the bars are real." More

Prison Braille Programs

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I can't say I'm nuts about Texas.  Guns. Trucks.  Giant Highways.  Death Row.  But there's a fascinating program in the Mountain View Women's Prison outside Temple,Texas, where more than 90 inmates take almost two years of training to work in the Braille translation facility and produce about 5,000 to 10,000 Braille pages per month. The Houston Chronicle reported this story in December.  Braille was developed in the early 19th century by Louis Braille, who lost his eyesight to a childhood accident., and it begins with six-dot coded letters, words and punctuation.

In the picture above, a woman works with what is called, "digital tactile graphics," one of the skills that add to women becoming certified in Braille.  Most of what they produce is for elementary and secondary students who are blind. In this 610 person prison, a woman could work in Braille– if she is accepted into the program — or she could train dogs for the handicapped in the kind of program I wrote about in an earlier post. But yep,she could also be sentenced to death.

Random you say, a program in braille in a prison?  I agree that much of what is offered behind bars seems chosen because someone got an idea and ran with it.  At Framingham, when I worked behind bars, the women had a bonsai tree program and they also made flags a la Betsy Ross.  Prison industries is not what I would call "logical."  Some would say labor is cheap and prisoners are used, sometimes abused,more than taught skills.  In the "Women in Building Trades" at Framingham, in the first years, women were not using tools because tools were not allowed behind bars for them!

But training someone to be a Braille transcriber seems worthwhile even if it seems somewhat random because the jobs earn real money ($50,000 a year says the Chronicle) and may help women with re-entry, a true sore spot for prisons, nation-wide.

Mountain View is the only prison in Texas which has this program but according to the National Prison Braille Network, there are over 36 programs operating in 26 states. In Mountain View, women get a yearlong program in some basics such as math,music and foreign language.  Then they work on computersbut only after accomplishing the "vintage Perkins Brailler, a manual typewriter that uses keystrokes to emboss raised dots on sheets of paper."

            

Two women from the program.

Prisoners Own Shakespeare Too

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Some years ago I brought an amazing artist to my college, Middlesex Community College, in Lowell, Massachusetts — Homer Jackson.  Jackson had honed his chops on Philadelphia's performance art scene and worked with prisoners and former prisoners.  My students loved him, and in particular, the way he allowed art and performance, poverty and loss, prisoner and free person to all blend into one.

One thing always leads to another it seems, when you're working for prisoner rights, and this year, I heard from a friend of Homer's, Steve Rowland,a two-time Peabody Award winning documentary producer, currently involved in a new project.

Called "Globe to Globe Visits Prison, or, To Whom Does Shakespeare Belong?" Rowland says he had two experiences that changed his world:  1) interviewing men in a Shakespeare class organized by Rehabiltation Through The Arts at Woodbourne Prison in NY State;  2) being the head interviewer at an amazing international Shakespeare festival at London's Globe Theater

Now, along side the Globe and along with Rehabilitation through the Arts, he's using material from three of Shakespeare's plays and making a documentary touching on issues domestic violence, questions of manhood, loyalty, betrayal, way and identity.

Here's a photo from a Nigerian production of A Winter's Tale which inspired Rowland.

And here's 5 minute trailer on his project page which clarifies more about the documentary.

Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA)  was founded in Sing Sing in 1996. Today, RTA works in five New York State prisons with innovative programs in theatre, dance, creative writing, voice and visual art. From their website, RTA says that they are "dedicated to using the creative arts as a tool for social and cognitive transformation behind prison walls."