Shakespeare Behind Bars
The visits by Pope Francis to three U.S. cities last month got a lot of
attention in the print, broadcast, and social media. Although I’m not a
huge fan of patriarchs and patriarchal religions, I’m interested in this
pope. He’s showing what I consider to be elements of the truest and best
teachings of Christianity. That’s the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew: 5-7).
I wish the followers of all the gods would take these teachings into their
hearts:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown
mercy.
One thing Francis did was to visit a prison, where he greeted and blessed
every single prisoner. He treated the men like human beings, not subhuman
criminals to be punished forever. He was kind and courteous to them.
The pope’s visit to the prison reminded me of
Shakespeare Behind Bars. There are actually two works with this title.
The one I came across first (I think I saw it on PBS) is the documentary
written and directed in 2005 by
Hank Rogerson and set in Kentucky’s Luther Luckett Correctional Complex,
a medium-security prison. I bought the DVD right away. (The nonprofit organization
Shakespeare Behind Bars, which is now twenty years old, “offers theatrical encounters with
personal and social issues to incarcerated and post-incarcerated adults
and juveniles, allowing them to develop life skills that will ensure their
successful reintegration into society.” Go to their site. It’s fascinating.)
The documentary begins with the prisoners self-selecting their roles in
The Tempest. It’s like reality TV as we watch them in rehearsal with
their director, Curt Tofteland, who says he’s really a facilitator and
tells us he picked
The Tempest because of its themes “leading to redemption and forgiveness.”
The actors—at least five murderers, a drug dealer who “shot it out with
a cop,” a man who abused seven girls, and an armed robber—also speak directly
to the camera. One’s in handcuffs when he speaks, another is just out of
“the hole,” a couple of them argue and justify themselves to the camera.
You know what I learned? These guys are real people! As Hal, the reporter
for the prison’s radio station who plays Propero, speaks about the banished
duke’s lesson in forgiveness, he has to wipe his eyes. He sounds educated;
the other guys, not so much. But they’re all honest and eloquent.
They aren’t really good actors, though. There’s a lot of shouting of lines,
and Trinculo, Caliban, and Stephano turn Act III, scene 2 into a funny
iambic pentameter rap. They also pronounce Milan as “Mill-ANE.” (Shakespeare’s
actors probably pronounced it “MILLen.”) But they work and work and work
on understanding and expressing the meaning of their lines. They also accept
and share the insights into their own lives they get from Shakespeare’s
lines.
When the day of the performance finally arrives, we see that they have
real (though limited) scenery and props. The men wear their costumes over
their prison uniforms and stage makeup is not used. Sitting in the audience
are their families and other visitors. The show’s a success! We learn,
in fact, that it was so successful that the men are invited to travel to
other prisons…and a minute later we see them by the bus, all lined up in
red jumpsuits and shackles.
These men, as the director says, have committed heinous crimes. Even so,
they’re honest and forthright when they speak to the camera, and by the
time the documentary ended, I was nearly weeping for the men who were denied
parole, for the kid who hanged himself with his shoelaces, for the understanding
these men have gained about why they committed their crimes. Pope Francis
should go see one of their shows.
Two or three years after I bought this DVD, I came across an ad for a
book titled
Shakespeare Behind Bars. Oh, I said to myself, it must be about the
same men. It’s not. It’s about female prisoners at the Framingham, Massachusetts,
Women’s Prison, said to be the most secure women’s prison in the U.S. in
the early 1980s. The book was written in 2001 by Jean Trounstine, an English
teacher. As I read about the lives of women in prison, it seems to me that
if
Orange Is the New Black (of which I found three episodes plenty)
is any indication, things have not improved for female prisoners, even
though back in the 80s, they got to wear just about any kind of clothing
they fancied and they had nail files and nail polish and even knitting
needles. The male guards are macho and vile and male-chauvinist-piggish
as they prey upon the women prisoners. (So what else is new??) Unlike the
Lockett center, which is clean and orderly, Framingham is described as
filthy and rundown. It’s the cliché of a place where people are punished,
not rehabilitated.
Trounstine taught at Framingham for ten years. Although she was engaged
as a writing teacher, she added Intro to Drama to her curriculum early
on. One night she showed a film version of
The Taming of the Shrew (that dreadful, slow-paced, Liz ’n’ Dick
version) to her class. “We talked,” Trounstine writes, “about what problems
Kate has being open to love, since she is slighted by her father for her
younger sister, and known around town as a shrew. I asked the women to
write about Kate and to decide if she really needs all that ‘punishment’
to come around…to loving Petruchio. … I asked them to write about what
it means to be ‘tamed’” (p. 31). Female prisoners being tamed? This is
something about the play I’ve never considered before. They also study
Othello (I’m guessing the movie Trounstine shows is Olivier’s version)
and
Lysistrata, the Greek play in which the women refuse sex to the men
until they stop going to war. After they study
The Merchant of Venice, they get permission to present their version
to the other prisoners.
Trounstine’s word pictures of the prisoners are heart-breaking. Like the
men at Luckett, these are real women who have committed real crimes. One
of them murdered her four-month-old baby, another was an arsonist who set
another woman on fire, others were prostitutes. In the book’s epilogue,
Trounstine writes that “Art at Framingham was a catalyst for transformation.
However, it does not produce the kind of metamorphosis that is easy to
measure. … In my prison classes, drama enabled the women to believe more
deeply in their abilities, to use their risk-taking natures in ways that
were productive and to create a community where they valued themselves
and others” (pp. 235-6). She also writes that “to convey the world of women
in prison, …I have changed [the prisoners’] names, created several composite
characters, reconstructed dialogue, and rearranged some incidents…” (p.
242).
As Chapter 8 opens, it’s June 1988 and the performance of
The Merchant of Veniceis at hand. It’s been really hard going. Cooperation
from the prison’s administrators and guards has ranged from indifferent
to hostile. The gym’s never available for rehearsals. Some of the women
have dropped out, one has died, and a new one comes in to play the judge,
but the other women hate her and there’s a big fight that nearly shuts
down the whole program. They’re still working on learning and rewriting
lines and blocking the action. They do a lot of rewriting of Shakespeare’s
verse so that it’s intelligible to their audience, some of whom speak very
little English. And they have a really awful dress rehearsal. (But everyone
in drama knows the cliché: a bad dress rehearsal means a good performance.)
Opening night finally arrives. The gym is filled. Practically everyone
at Framingham is there, even guards and administrators. But they’re not
doing the whole play—there’s no visit by foreign princes and Bassanio to
Portia’s home to select a gold, silver, or lead chest, no elopement by
Jessica with Lorenzo and his buds—so Trounstine stands in front of the
curtain and tells those parts of the story.
Now the curtain opens on the trial scene. The unpopular prisoner playing
the judge (changed from the Duke of Venice) is still trying to upstage
everyone else. Antonio, Bassanio, Gratiano, and the other guys are dressed
in “pimp suits” and acting tough. Portia (there’s no Nerissa) is not disguised
as a man but is there as a woman working to show her power in the all-male
courtroom. As she begins her famous “quality of mercy” speech to Shylock,
she is “preaching not only to Shylock but to the audience, who nod and
yes her, caught up in the outpouring of her plea for mercy” (pp. 206-7).
It’s obviously an issue near to the hearts of female prisoners who have
never received any mercy. Shylock doesn’t get his pound of flesh, of course.
He loses everything and is forced to convert to Christianity. As the curtain
closes, the audience hears his “lonesome howl,” which is Rose’s imitation
of Laurence Olivier’s
off-stage howl in his 1973 movie. I have this film on DVD and
find it almost impossible to believe the prisoners stayed awake when Trounstine
showed it to them. It’s set in high Victorian London—er, Venice, and though
the line readings by Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, Jeremy Bret, et
al., are well-nigh perfect, except for that famous off-stage howl, there’s
no passion in the film, not even among the three brides and grooms. The
film ends with the Kadish being sung, though whether for Shylock or Jessica
it’s hard to know. At Framingham, the audience explodes into applause.
Even the guards applaud. I sure wish I could’ve seen that performance!
Earlier, Trounstine quotes Rose, the prisoner who played Shylock. She
was not initially accepted by the others in the class. Now the class is
being interviewed. “Rose backs away from the circle…. ‘This prison life
isn’t important to most people, [she says to the reporter]. They’re not
gonna do anything different when they read about us. But me?’ She lets
out a little laugh, which is almost painful to hear. Then she shakes her
head. It’s as though she’s having a conversation with herself, trying to
sort out what she’s feeling. ‘I get very serious when I set high goals
for myself. I have to wake up, look in the mirror, and like who I see.
I have to deal with myself every day in here and face my mistakes. And
believe me that’s not easy. The class makes me feel I can.’ Rose pauses
and looks at me. ‘That’s the God’s truth’” (pp. 121-2).
