Radio story about Illinois performance of Doin’ Time

Readers,
I sincerely apologize for not yet finding a moment to write about the incredible experiences I had performing Doin’ Time last month at Illinois State University and at Lincoln Correctional Center, but I promise to provide an update soon.  In the mean time, here is a link to a radio interview I did with the local NPR station in Bloomington just prior to my performances there.
Please note that at the end of the radio interview I stated the wrong name of the activist organization I was describing.  The organization I’m actually describing at this moment in the interview is Our Children’s Place, which is an amazing group of folks in North Carolina who provide support for the children of prisoners.  The organization I named instead is another great activist organization called All of Us or None, which serves prisoners and reentrants nationwide.  Both groups are doing vital and difficult work, and I am proud to support their efforts.

More soon. . .

Performing at Illinois State Univ. and Lincoln Correctional for Women Sept. 19 and 21

About a year ago, a woman named Sherrin Fitzer contacted me out of the blue, asking if she could get a copy of the script of my play Doin’ Time to share with a group of women in an Illinois prison.  Sherrin works at Lincoln Correctional Center for Women and leads a theatre troupe comprised of incarcerated women; they call their ensemble Acting Out.  Sherrin and I exchanged many emails and conjured up a plan to collaborate.  Janet Wilson, director of the School of Theatre and Dance at Illinois State University in Bloomington, has collaborated with Sherrin and the women of Acting Out for many years, and Janet extended an invitation to me to perform Doin’ Time on her campus.  With support from many corners of the university, including the School of Theatre and Dance, Latino Studies, Crossroad’s Project, Honor’s Program, School of Social Work and the Department of Criminal Justice Sciences, Janet and Sherrin arranged a week-long residency for me:

• On Tuesday, September 18, 2012, from 10 AM to noon, I will lead “Writing Social Justice: A Writing Workshop for the Community” in Stevenson Hall, room 133.
• On Tuesday, September 18, 2012, from 5 to 6 PM in Centennial West 207, I will speak about UNC’s Moore Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program (MURAP) and diversity issues in higher education.
• On Wednesday, September 19, 2012, at 7:30 PM, I will perform Doin’ Time in Westhoff Theatre.  Click here for more information about the performance.

My time at Illinois State will be very exciting, but what will happen at Lincoln Correctional later that week is the most amazing opportunity I’ve had in eight years of touring with this play.  The women in the Acting Out troupe have read my script and written their own monologues about visitation and families.  Sherrin has been emailing me drafts of their monologues, and in this manner the women and I have been able to respond to one another’s work.  They have written some very powerful pieces, which they’ve been rehearsing with Sherrin.  Doin’ Time‘s director, the incomparable Joseph Megel, will travel to Illinois with me, and we’ll spend all day on Thursday, September 20th in rehearsals inside the prison with the women of Acting Out.  We’ll weave their eleven monologues into my play, and we’ll all perform together on the afternoon of Friday, September 21st for an audience of 150 to 200 incarcerated women.  Two more incarcerated women will run the tech cues for the show.
I have performed in a handful of prisons now in the U.S., Ireland, and Canada, and I’ve seen prisoners perform plays of their own in Michigan, North Carolina, and Louisiana.  I’ve also conducted and participated in improvisational theatre workshops in quite a few prisons, but this will be the first time that I’ve actually performed in a play with incarcerated theatre makers and the first time that anyone ever wrote or performed new material in response to my play Doin’ Time.  I have never performed Doin’ Time with other actors, and though I haven’t yet met any of the women of Acting Out, I am already deeply moved by their words and their willingness to enter into this adventure with me.
If you are going to be near Bloomington this week, please come to the show!  I’ll be posting more about my time in Illinois after my trip there.

 

PCAP Linkage Art Exhibition, April 20 to May 5, 2012 in Holland, MI

The Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) is an amazing program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, that takes undergrads into prisons, juvenile facilities, and urban high schools throughout Michigan to conduct collaborative arts workshops.  One of their other programs, the PCAP Linkage Project supports formerly incarcerated artists, writers, actors, dancers, and musicians who worked with PCAP during their imprisonment.  Working with returning citizens is far more difficult than working with folks in prison.  Though life in prison is terribly unpleasant, the incarcerated don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, how they’ll find work and make an income, or where they will sleep that night.  Returning citizens often find the free world very changed from what they knew before they entered prison, and those of them who became artists while in prison struggle to continue working creatively after their release because other concerns take precedence over the desire to make art.

On April 5, 2012, the PCAP Linkage Project held an amazing conference, organized by staff member Heather Wilson, for formerly incarcerated artists.  I had the privilege of getting to attend the day’s events in Detroit, meet the artists, and see some of their work.  Many of the artists brought drawings and paintings to the conference, and all the works of art collected that day are now on display at the Ridge Point Community Church at 340 104th Avenue in Holland, MI.  (That’s in the western part of the state, not far from Grand Rapids.)  Click here for more information about the exhibition which runs from now until May 5, 2012.  If you’re out in that neck of the woods, don’t pass up the opportunity to see these wonderful works of art.

If Walls Could Talk: A Mural Project with Incarcerated Mothers and Their Children, a post by Ashley Lucas

My former student Jamila Reddy just sent me this link to a website about a proposed mural project with incarcerated mothers at Riker’s Island and their children.  The incarcerated mothers will create an image which their children will paint in East Harlem, and the children will create an image which their mothers will paint inside the prison.  The video on the website shows artist Katie Yamasaki’s incredible previous mural work, which is very socially engaged.  She has collaborated with communities of women all over the world, and this project promises to produce amazing results as well.  Yamasaki is trying to raise the funds necessary to make these murals a reality.  This is the kind of place where I wish my tax dollars were going.  Very few activists or artists have such excellent ideas for connecting communities separated by prison walls.  Yamasaki’s efforts are inspiring and inspired.  Do not miss the chance to support this incredible work!

A Prison Is a Prison, Even in Canada: Doin’ Time on Tour; a post by Ashley Lucas

During the week that ended September and began October 2011, I had the privilege of taking my play to Canada for the first time.  One of Razor Wire Women‘s contributors Simone Davis took on the arduous task of scheduling three performances at two universities and a prison in the nation where she teaches and makes her home.  Simone does some incredible work.  In addition to teaching at the University of Toronto, she has brought the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program to Canada for the first time, setting up a course which a professor named Shoshana Pollack now teaches for students from Wilfrid Laurier University and incarcerated women at Grand Valley Women’s Institution.  By all reports, the new Inside-Out class is going very well, and at least one outside and a few inside students in the course attended my performance at the prison.  During my time in Canada, Simone told me about an extraordinary annual event called Prisoners’ Justice Day which is commemorated all over Canada with fasts, speeches, and protests.  Simone gave me a beautiful tee shirt designed for Prisoners’ Justice Day, and I will wear it with pride.  Thank you, Simone!

My first performance in Canada took place in the lovely Gill Theatre at the University of Toronto, where an incredible group of faculty and graduate students hosted me and ran the tech for the show.  Though the audience appeared to have about ninety people in it, they were so quiet that I could not read their reactions to the play until the house lights came on at the end of the show.  (Canadian audiences outside of prisons are in my experience a much quieter bunch than folks in the U.S. or Ireland.)  We had a very engaging and productive conversation at the end of the performance.  Several days later I encountered an equally supportive audience at Trent University in the small town of Peterborough, where I was hosted by a wonderful scholar named Gillian Balfour whose co-edited collection Criminalizing Women has a good deal in common with Razor Wire Women.

In between the two university performances, I visited Grand Valley Women’s Institution and performed for a group of about thirty incarcerated women.  The staff at Grand Valley explained to us that the prison has both minimum and medium security housing units but that the differences between the two were not enough to be much of an incentive for women to want to move down to medium security.  The whole prison operates on a higher security level, and with stricter rules, than most minimum security facilities in Canada.  True minimum security facilities in Canada do not have fences around them, but Grand Valley does.  Even at that, I was surprised to learn that the women there had some privileges that incarcerated people in the U.S. almost never have, like communal kitchens where they can cook meals for themselves.  (I also heard about such kitchens at the women’s prison in Dublin when I was there in 2005.)  Grand Valley also has some form of segregation cells for holding prisoners in isolation, though I did not see them or hear about how many such cells exist or why women are placed there.

My access to Grand Valley was facilitated by Simone Davis and Grand Valley’s educational counselor Peter Stuart, who not only took care of all arrangements made in preparation of my arrival but also ran the sound cues during the play.  Peter approaches his job with good humor, intelligence, and a genuine concern for the well-being and education of the women incarcerated at Grand Valley.  He represents the very best sort of work that can be accomplished by prison employees; he works to help prepare women to have successful lives after they leave prison.

As with all audiences I’ve encountered inside prisons, the women at Grand Valley watched my performance so intently and with such obvious emotion that I felt wrapped up in the energy that they offered me.  Several women left the performance early, most of them during the Healer monologue–the one published in RWW about a little girl whose father is in prison.  They were not in any way disruptive as they left, but it seemed clear that those who were going felt it would be too painful to stay–or at least that it what it looked and felt like to me.  The same thing happened with at least one of the women in the prison in Limerick, Ireland, when I performed there.  That monologue in particular appears to be the one that elicits the most forceful emotions from women whom I presume are incarcerated mothers.

In the discussion after the performance, the women told me about what visiting with their families is like at Grand Valley.  Drug sniffing dogs inspect each visitor and often terrify the children coming to see their mothers and grandmothers.  One of the women was very upset about a new schedule for a form of special visitation where families can stay the better part of a day at the prison.  Though I did not quite grasp all the details of how such visits are scheduled, I learned that such visits must be scheduled in advance and that the new form of scheduling makes it harder for families on the outside to choose the dates that would be workable for them, resulting in fewer of these special visits.  Several of the women in the audience wept as the cuts in visiting were discussed, and then a surprising thing happened.  One of the women who had spoken quite a bit during the discussion stood up and hugged me.  She thanked me for my performance, then sat me down in the front row of the audience and said, “Now I have something I want to give to you.”  She then performed a country song she had written about being an incarcerated mother.  The song had several verses and a chorus complete with hand gestures that suggested holding a baby, dancing with a man, and dying.  Never before has someone in an audience offered me a performance after my play, and I was delighted and remain deeply grateful.

People in all three of the audiences I met in Canada were deeply troubled by the new omnibus crime bill which looks certain to pass through Parliament soon.  The bill introduces mandatory sentencing and longer prison terms than Canadians have faced in the past.  The prison I visited was already expanding in anticipation of the many new prisoners expected in the next five years.  Peter Stuart at Grand Valley has begun investigating longer term educational programming to benefit the women who will serve longer sentences.  Why is it that other countries emulate the very worst of U.S. policies on crime and incarceration?

My memories of the women I met at Grand Valley will remain with me always, and my sincerest thanks go to Simone, Gillian, Peter, and the folks at the University of Toronto for making my first Canadian tour such a success.  If any of the folks I met in Canada are reading this and would like to share reactions to the performances on the blog, we would be happy to post them.

Prison Arts in the News Website, a post by Ashley Lucas

A recent comment on this blog led me to discover an excellent website I’d never seen before.  The Prison Arts in the News Website provides links to arts work happening in prisons all over the world.  The blogger running the site does not provide commentary on these news stories but casts an impressive net in finding instances of prison arts work in many genres and countries.  This sort of data compilation is really helpful for those of us who write scholarly articles about prison arts work and for artists who want to find models of how others are doing such work in carceral contexts.

Kudos to the administrator of the Prison Arts in the News Website!  I admire your work.

Drama Therapy in Prison Contexts by Ashley Lucas

When Jodie forwarded me the link to a news story about the use of drama therapy in a women’s prison in Lebanon, I was reminded yet again of the power of the arts in difficult times and places.  Theatre has been used for thousands of years to document, describe, and reflect the most violent, arduous, and incomprehensible of human actions and emotions.  In the past few decades, many trained therapists have learned to use theatre as an effective tool to help patients tap into their traumatic life experiences and productively think about, discuss, and reenact events which shape their current emotional states and behaviors.

The Geese Theatre Company is perhaps the best known group which uses drama therapy in correctional settings, and they have worked with youth and adults in prisons as well as prison staff members in countries around the globe.  Though I have not seen their work personally, a certified drama therapist friend of mine who has studied their techniques uses them to great success with the court-involved youth with whom she works in North Carolina.

It should be noted that all theatre happening in and around prisons is not necessarily drama therapy.  Though many people casually attribute therapeutic qualities to all artistic activity, especially when its conducted by or with disadvantaged populations, real arts therapy requires a licensed therapist who is trained to guide people through the emotional and psychological issues raised by particular artistic exercises.

My admiration extends to those practicing drama therapists who take on the many challenges faced by the incarcerated and those who work with them.  May this work bring about greater healing and peace in our troubled world.

Razor Wire Women at the 2011 ATHE Conference in Chicago

Greetings, razor wire women of the world!

This week the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) held its annual conference in downtown Chicago at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel, and the buzz about Razor Wire Women rippled through the conference.  I am overwhelmed by the amount of enthusiasm and support for this book and blog which were expressed to me over the course of the four days I spent at the conference.  Though our publisher, SUNY Press, does not attend this conference, I heard reports that ATHE attendees were asking publishers at the book exhibit where they could buy our book.  SUNY provided us with a stack of flyers providing a discounted purchase price on our book for ATHE participants, and demand for the flyers was so high that I ran out of them days before the conference ended.  The Women and Theater Program (WTP), which is a focus group within ATHE, helped to promote the book by sponsoring both a roundtable discussion of Razor Wire Women and a panel on documentary theatre, which discussed several plays, including Doin’ Time: Through the Visiting Glass.  (One monologue from the play appears in Razor Wire Women.)

Theatre scholar Sara Warner of Cornell University joined me on the roundtable discussion about Razor Wire Women and spoke about her research on the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women.  Sara’s chapter of RWW is one of several articles she has written about the extraordinary performance work done by director Rhodessa Jones and a mixed company of professional theatre makers and women detained at the San Francisco County Jail.  Sara has published several articles about the Medea Project’s work, and her most recent one appears in the final section of Razor Wire Women.  As it turns out, at least one woman in the audience of our panel that day, Lisa Biggs, has worked with the Medea Project in years past.  A heartfelt discussion ensued as the women who had gathered to engaged with the roundtable asked questions and shared their experiences of witnessing or participating in theatre in carceral settings.

Domnica Radulescu, a professor at Washington and Lee University, had heard about my theatre work in prisons at the 2007 WTP conference and since that time had tried unsuccessfully to gain access to a Virginia prison so that she could start a theatre workshop with prisoners.  She asked for advice about how to convince prison administrators to let her into a prison to do theatre.  Those of us in the room who had done this type of work before came up with a few tips that I thought might be useful to those of you reading this blog who have similar goals:

•  Locate volunteers who are already working in the prison and get them to introduce you to the prison staff and administrators.  These volunteers might be doing faith-based ministry work, tutoring, or some other kind of work within the prison.  Their purpose in the prison does not necessarily need to align with yours, but these folks can help you get your foot in the door and earn the trust of those who run the prison.
• Pitch your idea for a project or workshop in the prison as something that would benefit all people who live and work within the prison.  Theatre and other art forms help people build life skills, such as public speaking, literacy, and teamwork.  Your primary objective in wanting to do arts work in prison may not be about giving this skill set, but helping prison administrators understand the benefits of theatre will enable them to see your ideas as positive contributions to a very difficult workplace.
• Keep in mind that prisons are complex environments with many security and scheduling concerns.  Be adaptable and work with those who run the prison to make sure that what you are doing does not inconvenience them any more than is necessary.
• Follow all prison rules, even if you personally object to them.  Sometimes rules exist for legitimate reasons you do not understand. Even if the rules are truly arbitrary and unfair, you must remember that your ability to work with prisoners is completely dependent on your ability to gain access to them.  As a volunteer, you have no control over how the prison is run, and when you enter a prison as a volunteer, you do so only because those who are in control have given you permission to be there.  If you do not respect their rules, you will not be allowed to return, and the prisoners who meet with you could suffer consequences for your behavior.  Any breech of the rules could also cause administrators to shut down other programs for prisoners besides the one with which you are involved.
• Remember that prison guards and administrators are people, too.  This may seem like ridiculous advice, but it needs to be said.  Activists and prisoners’ family members may have very negative feelings about prison guards and administrators because of their personal experiences with them, but as in any profession, some people who work in the prison behave badly, while others display profound empathy and kindness.  If you walk into a prison assuming that all guards and administrators are the enemy, you will likely not last long at that prison, nor will whatever program you have come there to start.  People who work in prisons have incredibly difficult jobs, and some of those people genuinely want to help maintain prisoners’ personal safety during their incarceration and encourage them to live better lives upon their release from prison. Prison workers who have this mindset can be an incredible asset to your program and can do a great deal to provide you and the prisoners with access to space, time inside the prison, and resources.

Immediately following the panel on Razor Wire Women, I had the good fortune to be on a panel about documentary theatre, which was organized by Jules Odendahl-James, who does really amazing scholarship on forensic media.  Jules, Magda Romanska and Joan Lipkin each gave really remarkable presentations about various documentary plays, and I performed a couple of monologues from my one-woman show , Doin’ Time: Through the Visiting Glass.  After which, Nina Billone Prieur presented a paper about how her students at Duke University responded to my play after seeing me perform it on their campus.  Nina was particularly fascinated by the fact that my play, which depicts a variety of characters who have loved ones in prison, unsettled quite a few of their students.  Though the play makes no ostensible arguments about the guilt or innocence of people in prison, some of the Duke students felt that to have sympathy with prisoners’ families meant that they had to somehow relinquish their beliefs that people in prison deserve their incarceration.  Nina provided a very cogent analysis of the ways in which the students’ overall affinity for me as a performer or a narrator of these experiences and as a prisoner’s child myself seemed to some to disrupt their abilities to perceive prisoners as purely “bad,” despite the fact that I at no time play the role of a prisoner during the show.  This was the first time that I’ve ever heard a scholar speak about my work as a playwright and a performer, and I am humbled to have created the site for Nina’s very perceptive analysis.

Many thanks to the scholars and theatre makers at ATHE and the good women of the WTP!  Jodie and I are very grateful of your support for Razor Wire Women and for your own efforts to engage with incarcerated people.  This week the two of us are headed to Las Vegas for two conferences: the Society for the Study of Social Problems and the American Sociological Association.  We hope to see some of you there!

Job Posting for Project Coordinator with the Civilians: Help Produce a Play about Women Prisoners in Columbia

Below is a job posting for a project coordinator position with The Civilians. Please pass along to any that may be interested. For more information, e-mail managing director Marion Young: marion@thecivilians.org Thanks! *The Bogota Project* *US Project Coordinator:* The Civilians seeks a Project Coordinator for its upcoming project, working title the Bogota Project. The Civilians is developing an original musical inspired by the real life annual beauty pageant in El Buen Pastor Women’s Prison, the national women’s prison in Bogota, Colombia. The Civilians will go inside the prison in Bogota for four weeks in September, 2011 to conduct research and interviews with the participating and non-participating inmates, guards, prison staff, judges, and pageant coaches. The research and interviews will be used to shape a new musical with a book by Academy Award-nominated playwright Jose Rivera and songs by the Colombian rock band Aterciopelados. Based on a process developed by The Civilians over ten years, the Investigative Phase will involve Colombian artists conducting interviews in Bogota. At the end of this first Phase, the creative team will synthesize all of the material, creating a work to be developed in partnership with the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the Iberoamericano Festival de Teatro en Bogota. The position of Project Coordinator will have two main purposes: The first is to support the organization and coordination of the Investigation Phase in partnership with Ella Fuksbrauner, the Colombian-based Project Coordinator. In this capacity, the Project Coordinator will be the main point of communication between Colombia and The Civilians’ Brooklyn offices, confirming that the required interviews are taking place, that all necessary information is passed along on both sides, and keeping full documentation of all the interviews that are conducted for future tracking. Additionally, the Project Coordinator will assist Artistic Director Steve Cosson in researching important interview leads, the history of the pageant, and any other research requested by the participating artists. Secondly, the US Project Coordinator is responsible for the organization, documentation, and tracking of all of the interviews and related transcripts. The Coordinator will be a point person in communicating between Jose Rivera and Aterciopelados about what interview transcripts they need as the play’s development takes place and for ensuring that all transcripts, interview releases, and audio is accounted for. The position will begin in mid-August and will be a part-time four-month position through mid-December. Salary is competitive and will be based on number of hours available. Applicants must be bilingual in Spanish and English, should have experience with both administrative positions as well as research-based and dramaturgy work. Applicants of color are strongly encouraged. Please send a cover letter and resume, including three references to Marion Young at marion@thecivilians.org.

Valencia C. in Images and Words, a post by Ashley Lucas

Valencia C., a RWW contributor incarcerated in California, is the only male prisoner featured in our book.  From the moment he read our initial call for contributions to the special issue of the National Women’s Studies Association Journal on “Women, the Criminal Justice System, and Incarceration: Processes of Power, Silence, and Resistance” (Summer 2008), Valencia (also known as Ciri) expressed genuine concern for and solidarity with women in prison.  The book Razor Wire Women eventually grew out of the abundance of high quality contributions we received for that journal issue.  Valencia was the first artist to get in touch with us and is the only artist featured both in that special journal issue and RWW.

After reading RWW for the first time, Valencia sent me an extraordinary letter accompanied by three new drawings.  Here are the images and the words he wrote to accompany them.  This first image is split in two here because my scanner wasn’t big enough to get it all into one image, but the daughter and mother figures here should be side by side (daughter on the left and mother on the right):

Drawing #1 is called “Epiphany.” (charcoal, pastels, and colored pencils on paper)

For this, I wrote:

 

                freedom, rights, and hope

                                are taken away

                dignity, sanity, and justice

                                carried out

                Young loved ones are left

                                to face danger and become

                                                society’s prey.

                Morals, humanity, and identity

                                are swept up

                and in a single epiphany,

                all is gone. . . forever lost.

Drawing #2 is called “Thrown Away.” (charcoal and pastels on paper)

It goes as follows:

                Legally thrown away

                                by the hand of those

                that are supposed to help

                                into a senseless place.

                A ruthless labyrinth

                                with the exits weld

                were many denied

                                you are illegally held

                your identity captive

                                as a rare bird in a cage.

 

#3 is titled “Ashley.” (watercolor in paper)

The first two pieces are a recapitulation of all I read in the book.  After I brainstormed, this came out.

The last one is a way of me showing gratefulness/gratitude for your work (and all “free” people who take a serious look at the problem and actually take the initiative to find a helpful solution).  This is for accepting my work and including it in your book, and I am willing to participate in any future projects if you would like me to, and if there is any in sight.

Might the Lord God bless you all.

Respectfully and thankfully,

Valencia C.

Valencia, we will gladly post your artwork and thoughts on this blog any time you would like to share them with us.

If those of you reading this blog would like to invite Valencia to contribute artwork to any of your future endeavors, please send a message to us using the “Contact Us” portion of our website, and we’ll be sure to send your words along to Valencia.  We would do the same for any of our incarcerated contributors, so please use this site to reach out to them and let them know how much their work means to you.  We sustain one another through communication.

From NewPolitics: On resistance in women’s prisons

A valuable piece by Victoria Law, who is the outside publisher of Tenacious and the author of Resistance Behind Bars. (More about both of those here or just look at the sidebar.) She narrates an entire secret history of fighting back in women’s prisons, beginning with the August 1974 rebellion at Bedford Hills:

IN 1974, WOMEN IMPRISONED at New York’s maximum-security prison at Bedford Hills staged what is known as the August Rebellion. Prisoner organizer Carol Crooks had filed a lawsuit challenging the prison’s practice of placing women in segregation without a hearing or 24-hour notice of charges. In July, a court had ruled in her favor. In August, guards retaliated by brutally beating Crooks and placing her in segregation without a hearing. The women protested, fighting off guards, taking over several sections of the prison, and holding seven staff members hostage for two and a half hours.

(Note: My linking to this piece is not meant to valorize rioting or hostage-taking. I wouldn’t want to be one of those seven guards. Nor for that matter would I want to be Carol Crooks after the guards finished beating her. Which is kind of the point.)