Sherry Chandler » Shakespeare Behind Bars
Shakespeare Behind Bars
Since 1995, Curt Tofteland, a man to whose training in a one-week workshop, I largely owe the freedom with which I read my poetry, has conducted a program called Shakespeare Behind Bars. In Luther Luckett Correctional Facility, which we locals call LaGrange, Curt directs a troupe of inmates in one Shakespeare play a season. This year’s production will be Measure for Measure.
Hank Rogerson’s documentary film, also called Shakespeare Behind Bars, follows the troupe through its 2003 season. The play is The Tempest. Interviews — more accurately, perhaps, personal monologues — with the players are interspersed with scenes of rehearsal and character development. We are allowed to see the way in which developing their character for the stage leads to introspection about their own pasts and possibilities for their futures. It is a wonderful thing — in the Shakespearean sense — to watch these men find links in their own lives to this 400-year-old play about a magician’s growth from revenge to forgiveness and redemption.
Each of these men in his own way seeks redemption, forgiveness, self-forgiveness. Some fail miserably in the quest. None succeeds fully within the course of this film. But with others — Sammie perhaps or Hal — we see a glimmering of hope.
Watching the film, we are with them in this struggle, we want them to suceed, we hurt with them when they fail.
These men are amazingly willing to show themselves open and vulnerable. To be an actor, one must be open and vulnerable, and some of these men are remarkable actors. It must take great courage to put on costumes and play these roles before their fellows in “the yard.”
Consider Red, a man convicted of armed robbery. By necessity, the troupe returns to the Shakespearean tradition in which all parts are taken by men. Red is chosen to play the 15-year-old ingénue Miranda. He didn’t want this part, says it is “put on him” by the others because of his looks. But by the performance date, he has found within himself remnants of innocence and vulnerability so that he can convincingly speak those famous words “Oh brave new world that has such people in it.”
A film, even a documentary, is a crafted thing, an artifact. It is necessary to remember that what we are seeing within the ninety minutes of this film is not the whole of these men’s lives and that these men do not necessarily exemplify the huge population of prisoners in the United States. Luther Luckett is an exceptional prison and these men are exceptional within Luther Luckett Those chosen to be players must be model prisoners. Nevertheless, this film will shred prejudices. For me, the first was that convicted felons are by definition ignorant, illiterate, and without self-knowledge.
Curt Tofteland says it is not his place to judge these men. Society has already done that. The mission of Shakespeare Behind Bars is stated thus:
Shakespeare Behind Bars embraces restorative justice. Of the 2.4 million inmates incarcerated within the prisons of the United States, 90% will at some point in their lives return to society. The program was designed to allow the adult prison population an opportunity to examine relevant personal and social issues within the structure of an aesthetic experience. This drama-in-education approach offers participants the opportunity for ‘safe’ encounters with complex issues. This approach encourages the development of the interpersonal life skills that will contribute to the inmates successful reintegration into society.
The virtue of this film is that it allows us also — those of us who by some luck have managed to live our lives without commiting acts of violence — to share in the experience of restorative justice, to see these men in the full complexity of their human condition. If we are lucky, it will help us, too, to develop some empathy, tolerance, and compassion.
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1 Comment
1. Sherry Chandler » S&hellip replies at 20th April 2007, 7:07 am :
[...] But what I came here to tell you is that I was tickled pink to find that one among the “Thirteen More Essential Southern Documentaries” picked by the OA editors is Shakespeare Behind Bars that I talked about here a while back. Mike Powell’s review begins like this: In a medium-security Kentucky prison with decades to piddle, wile, suffer, and eventually atone, acting seems like a better way to spend time than moving drugs or getting shivved. But the prisoners in Shakespeare Behind Bars attend rehearsals like a church congregation—for them, the theater becomes a place to sweat out their troubles rather than project for the benefit of an audience. Because they have nothing. A library card and time with the Natuilus machine out back. Maybe parole but probably not. For someone whose therapy is to have their existence wrung-out and zeroed, the submersion that comes with Method Acting is less an artistic choice and more a canny attempt at self-preservation. [...]
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