Theatre for Social Change at UDESC, a post by Eddie Williams

My name is Eddie Williams and I am currently a student at the University of Michigan studying Acting and Psychology. I have completed four years at the University so far, but I still have one more year to complete because there are many more class requirements that come with having two majors as opposed to just one. After graduation I intend on continuing my education by pursuing a Master’s in Social Work. I figured by doing this I will be able to find a career where I am able use my love for theatre and the arts, not for entertainment per se, but more so as means to deal with social problems in our society today. Throughout my time at the University I have been looking for classes to take that combined both of my interests. I found that intersection when I took the Theatre & Incarceration class, taught by Ashley Lucas who is also the director Prison Creative Arts Project, also known as PCAP. The class and the program overall opened my eyes to the problems that exist in the criminal justice system and incarceration not just in the United States but around the world. I’ve gained so much insight, over the past couple of months, into the harsh realities of the incarcerated population. It is through PCAP that I was able to facilitate a theatre workshop at Milan Federal Correctional Institution. With the use of theatre, I was able to cultivate an environment that enabled the men to express themselves freely and creatively. All around it was a great experience, one that made me feel very fulfilled because it showed that importance of the arts and how they can be used to uplift, heal, connect, and ultimately rehumanize people.

Coming to Brazil was another aspect of PCAP that broadened my horizons and made me think about the issues of incarceration on an international level rather than just nationally. I would have never thought that I’d be able to go to Brazil. I knew going in that this was going to be a life defining experience, one that would further confirm what I want to do with my life. In just the first week in Florianópolis I have been able to see the different ways theatre can be used to express oneself and raise awareness to issues you never thought about before. On day two in the Florianópolis, the class and I had the privilege of watching four black women perform a piece discussing the issues of race in Brazil. They used dancing, singing, and different scenarios to bring to the forefront their black experiences. This specifically included issues of police brutality against blacks, colorism within the black community, lack of positive black representation, and ultimately the issue of slavery and its impact on us today. I was not surprised at all that the experiences that they had shared were exactly like the experiences of black people in the United States. As a black person myself, I resonated with the piece. It was important for people that didn’t identify as black to see it so that they could understand what life is like in our world.

The talkback with University of Michigan students after the UDESC students performed the first half their play.

There were also the pieces by presented by Sisi, Alé, and other students of UDESC throughout the week that touched on very important topics. These topics ranged from what’s it like to be a queer black woman to the need for philosophy classes to remain an option as a major on the university level. Each performance was charged with a strong specific social message which forced the audience see things from a different perspective. The performers took our assumptions and pre-conceived notions about specific identities and flipped them on their head. This was reinforced by the very unconventional and Brecht-like presentation of each performance. For example, the UDESC student performance of the first half of their play started with us coming into a dark room and walking around the set, while the students began repeating different sentences, at various points of the stage, and lighting the room up with their phones. Another example was Alé’s performance which had the audience sitting in the round. He started by greeting everyone in a very sensual way either with a kiss or laying on their laps, and at many points throughout the show he talked directly to the audience. I found out later that his purpose for this doing was to make people think about how we often fetishize the LGBTQ community. All the performances made for an overall educational experience. I loved every bit of it as I felt I grew better as a person. It made me want to fully immerse myself in the act of listening to understand rather than assuming and thinking I know all the answers, because I don’t. With all that the class and I learned and was exposed to in the first week, I am excited to see what is in store over the next two weeks.

Guest blogger Violet on doing theatre with teenagers in the U.S. and Brazil

Hello! I’m Violet, a rising junior majoring in Theatre Arts and minoring in Community Action and Social Change. I was introduced to PCAP through the two classes taught by Ashley Lucas. I found The Atonement Project, the fall semester class, when looking for requirements for both my major and minor. On the first day of class Ashley mentioned that if we had interest in going to Brazil we could take her other class, Theatre and Incarceration, in the winter. Needless to say I was sold from that moment. That semester I co-facilitated a workshop at the Washtenaw Youth Detention Center and this past semester at the Washtenaw Center for Forensic Psychiatry.  

Theatre has always been my way communicating with other people and the world. Theatre itself is a language and way to bring people together. Being in Brazil has added to my list of experiences where this is true. Despite my total inability to speak Portuguese, I was still able to create relationships with people through the games we played, the things we laughed at, and the songs we sang. I had never been to South America prior to this trip but it had always been on my bucket list to come to Rio. The icing on the cake was that I was able to come here do theatre.

I have seen many differences in the theatre of Brazil compared to the theatre in the US. Especially with the current political climate of Brazil, many of the shows we have seen have been addressing those political issues. Not to say politics don’t influence American theatre but Ashley did make a point that political theatre was more openly funded and supported in Brazil. However, I have seen more similarities than anything when going to the workshops. The most incredible workshop was the one in the favela. Six of us, myself included, went into a theatre workshop for teenagers led by UniRio students. I had done a workshop with a group girl teenagers previously before in Michigan and was expecting it to be difficult. With teenage girls it can be like pulling teeth trying to get them to participate. It took a long time to build trust and get everyone to participate in the workshop. However, when we arrived the first Saturday to participate in the workshop, we were immediately greeted and welcomed into the community. From the very start, we all got along very well. One of the games we played involved us dancing around the space to music and as soon as it ended, we all had to run to fit into squares that were taped on the floor. We were running around trying to fit as many people in one square as possible. The game not only got us physically closer but created a supportive atmosphere. Everyone was working to be inclusive and fit every person in the square. This environment would dictate the rest of the time we spent together including when we returned the next Saturday to lead a workshop. That next Saturday we came and we again received with the same positive energy as the week before. We introduced many new games to them all and had a total blast. 

At the end of each workshop there was a debrief session, something that is not common in US. I remember asking them all “Why do you do theatre?” and then through translation I got almost the same answer from everyone; “It is my dream.” This shook my perspective on theatre and opened my eyes to the privilege I held. My ability to study theatre in the US is a privilege. For these teenagers, just being in a theatre workshop meant they were living their dream. I realized I had taken for granted my access to theatre education and the opportunities I had in the US. For the kids in the workshop, this was the only theatre they were given and it made them feel whole. One boy said he liked the new games we had introduced to them “because they fed my soul.” These were maybe 16 year-olds describing the dramatic importance and impact of theatre on their lives. I saw this in my work in Michigan, and again I see it here that these young teenagers are the most thoughtful and honest people. Hearing their voices gave me a reminder of why I continue to do theatre and how fortunate I am to be able to. I cannot wait to return to the US with this renewed perceptive but hope to return again to this amazing place to these amazing people some day. Brazil, thank you for everything. 

Tchau,

Violet

Guest blogger Meredith on performances from the Theatre of the Oppressed Conference

We arrived in the plaza early (on time) and devoured paper bags full of hot caramel corn doused in sweetened condensed milk from one of the many pipoca carts lining the edge of the city center. As we waited for our program to begin, I tried to take in the parts of the city I might normally overlook – an old woman on a park bench whispering secrets to pigeons, men delivering flowers on bicycles, angry monkeys yelling at one another up high in the trees, beautiful architecture I don’t have the art history knowledge to describe properly, children wearing sweaters despite it being 65 degrees outside (it is currently “winter” in Brazil).

Finally, a number of plastic chairs were set up in a circle and familiar faces from the Theatre of the Oppressed conference began to assemble. Over the next few hours, participants from the conference performed scenes they had workshopped throughout the week. Afterwards, our giant group played theatrical games in the middle of the plaza. As a college theatre student, this public display of artistic expression excited and fascinated me. In all of my experiences with theatre done in public spaces, a true audience is often limited and passerby are usually annoyed, slightly amused, or a vague mixture of the two. In Largo do Machado I stood rapt – half due to the incredible performances and games, and half as a result of the overwhelmingly positive response from onlookers. Old men, women with young children, teenagers, a middle-aged man who looked strangely like my fourth grade teacher – they all stood and watched, applauded with gusto, and even participated in the games. Never in my life have I seen this type of response to theatre. It is clear that in Brazil, art is not seen as something reserved for a certain type of person or group.

The first performance featured three children from the Maré favela. The age and talent of the sole girl in the group of performers caught my eye. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen, but she commanded the attention of the crowd with unabashed enthusiasm and confidence. It’s always refreshing, both as a performer and a human, to see someone exude so much joy while creating art. In a field where it is easy to get caught up and take myself too seriously, I crave these brief moments that remind me what theatre is capable of. It was a deep desire for more of these reminders that led me to PCAP in the first place.

I have always been passionate about theatre and social justice issues, but had difficulty finding mediums where I could merge the two. When I heard about Ashley’s Theatre and Incarceration course, I immediately signed up. I co-facilitated a theatre workshop in the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility with a group of lively, opinionated, hysterical women. The class helped me build a bridge between my two ostensibly separate passions, but it also served as a necessary, positive jolt in the way I look at myself and my art. I cannot rave enough about the theatre program at the University of Michigan and the remarkable training I have received, but after three years, I was feeling a little worn down. The competitive nature of the community, the focus on the individual, and the notion of being “good” weighed heavy on my mind, and I found it difficult to enjoy my work. I felt drowned in a world where theatre was regarded as “high art,” meant for a certain type of person, with a certain level of education, and a certain amount of money. Theatre was black and white. It wasn’t until I enrolled in Ashley’s class and began my prison workshop that I rediscovered how powerful art could be, how important it is for theatre to wade through the unexamined grey area. How, if used correctly, theatre has the capability to rearrange power. That, simply put, theatre is for everybody.

The day was filled with laughter, warmth, language barriers, and a true feeling of community. My favorite activity was facilitated by a theatre troupe from UCLA known as the Sex Squad. The squad uses theatre, music, and other types of art to promote sexual health education in high schools around Los Angeles. The participants in the plaza were split into five groups. Each group was assigned a substance that transmits HIV (I was semen) and was told to create a unique movement and way of singing their substance in Portuguese. We created a choir of sorts and soon I was standing in the middle of the city square, in the center of the crowd, conducting the chanting – “VAGINAL FLUID! BLOOD! BREAST MILK!” Arms flailed, people stared, and I went and ate more popcorn afterwards.

Alas, here we are now, at the airport in Rio, preparing to depart. I’ve eaten my weight in churros, red meat, fresh fruit, bacon popcorn, and my fellow peers are ready to roll me onto the plane. I loved spending time in this country where I grapple to understand and communicate and find the bathroom, a foreign land where I grew to love the warmth and the slow pace and the orchids in the trees, a trip I took with nearly perfect strangers who taught me so much. I am extremely grateful to Ashley Lucas, our fearless (and patient) leader, to Anna, our graduate school companion and translator, and to all those at UniRio who kissed us on both cheeks and let us be a part of their beautiful work. Obrigada & boa noite, Brasil!

Guest blogger Elena Khutoretsky on Teatro Renascer

Elena drinking cafezinho

My name is Elena and this trip will be my last experience as a student at the University of Michigan. Although I graduated this past May, I am thankful to still be able to participate in this program. I have facilitated workshops through PCAP with incarcerated men, women, and teenagers since September of last year. I chose to come to Brazil in order to continue this work while immersed in a completely different culture.

Prior to coming to Brazil, my experience was limited to prisons and youth facilities, where there were strict rules and restrictions on the content that we can work with in our workshops. Here in Rio de Janeiro, I have expanded my experience to include theater workshops in hospitals and favelas as well. One such experience was particularly memorable for me.

Michigan and UniRio students and faculty with the folks at Teatro Renascer

It happened earlier this week, when we paid a visit to Teatro Renascer, which is a group of elders at a nearby hospital who participate in an action-packed workshop every week, led by Carmela, a professor at UniRio. The participants were lively and very welcoming, and I hardly even noticed the language barrier amidst all the hugs and smiles. The workshop started with a Portuguese song and dance, followed by a name game which involved participants inventing creative ways to say their names and teaching it to others. The highlight of my day was when, in the middle of my presentation of my name, everyone in the group started chanting it with me and dancing in a circle, concluding the activity. Most of the activities were very physical in nature, often involving collaboration among small groups of participants. We created depictions of bicycles, peeing dogs, various modes of transportation, many different kinds of animals, and one battleship that required everyone’s participation. I quickly found myself literally bouncing up and down with a level of energy I hadn’t felt in a very long time. The final activity was a very intense rendition of a song about the four elements of earth, water, air, and fire, in relation to our bodies. We stood in a circle, singing fiercely with furled eyebrows and stomping feet, while each one of us took turns performing a dance in the middle of the circle. You haven’t seen an elderly lady bust a move like I have.

Elena is a big fan of the monkeys we’ve encountered in Rio.

I left the place with delicious snacks in my belly, a broad grin on my face, and a surplus of euphoric invigoration that lasted all day long. It was to this date the most uplifting and energizing workshop I have ever had the pleasure of participating in.

More monkeys!

When I later reflected on the experience, I came to the realization that we could have done many of these activities in a Brazilian prison (which are relatively lenient when it comes to content), and some even in a US prison, especially if we modified them to avoid touching one another. And yet, I couldn’t imagine having this level of fun if I did the same workshop in a prison. Why? Because the unfortunate reality is that there is no amount of energy or vigor that could ever make me forget the fact that we are always being watched, that some people don’t want me there, or that some people don’t believe that prisoners even deserve to have fun in the first place. I’ve had workshops in prisons where we laughed a lot and had a fantastic time, but that has always been in spite of, not instead of, the constant awareness of the rules we have to follow, and the knowledge that the people I am working with are not given the same respect and autonomy that I enjoy. It wasn’t until my experience with Teatro Renascer that I truly understood how much of a difference it makes just knowing in the back of my mind that the participants and I are treated with the same level of respect by society and that no one in the facility looks down on what we do. It made me reflect on how much extra work it takes in prison to achieve just a fraction of the result I would achieve elsewhere. For this reason, this experience highlighted for me the importance of doing theater in prisons. Because there’s not enough of it, because it takes a lot of work, and because everyone deserves it equally.

Thanks for reading,

Elena

Guest blogger Laurel Cerier on doing a workshop at a Brazilian hospital

Laurel at the Botanical Garden

Hello readers! I´m Laurel, a rising senior at the University of Michigan dual majoring in International Studies and Psychology with a minor in Community Action and Social Justice. I joined UM´s Prison Creative Arts Program (PCAP) through Ashley´s first Theatre and Incarceration class two years ago and have since facilitated (with a partner) a theatre workshop at Women´s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, Michigan´s sole women´s prison, as well as a visual arts workshop at G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility. In addition, I worked on the Prison Art Show Committee for the 19^th annual show exhibiting donated art and items for sale by prisoners from the majority of Michigan´s prisons. This fall, I plan to join PCAP´s Literary Review Committee, which compiles selected writing pieces from Michigan prisoners each year into its Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing.

When people asked me why I had decided to go to Brazil to work in prisons, as if this was some insane longing for extra thrill in my life, I always had a hard time answering. It is difficult to articulate my understanding that coming here would undoubtedly teach me more about what it means to be human. After my previous experiences working in Michigan prisons (another “crazy” notion) brought me more in touch with the relationship between policy and people, it is clear to me that a person can read and learn all they want to in a classroom, but until something is before them, being understood in some physical capacity, it remains in the imagination ready for the mind´s interference. As a result, when friends returned from the trip last year with newfound enlightenment and even more questions about how the world works, I could not say no to Ashley´s invitation.

Although I came to Rio most interested in attending the theatre workshops run by UniRio students in local Brazilian prisons, the program led by Miguel, a retiring UniRio professor, at a local hospital ultimately became my favorite. It is not a workshop, per se, as the students did not interact regularly with the same group of people throughout their hours at the hospital on any given day, but this in no way diminishes the work they do there. When I arrived at the facilitators´ office with a few of my UM companions, we were each handed a brightly colored apron and given a brief explanation of what we were about to partake in: fun! Moments later, we lined up behind the bubbly facilitators and were off!

Joe & Laurel get ready to eat their first feijoada–the Brazilian national dish

The group sang a samba song while playing guitars and a tambourine as we all danced our way through the gray halls of the hospital up to a sunlit lobby, out to the front of the building, and right up to a woman leaving the hospital. The singing continued until one of the UniRio students asked her if she would like a happiness checkup, to which she agreed with a mile-long smile across her face. He put his ear near her chest, listening to her “samba heartbeat,” created by the deep ka-thunk of the his classmate´s tambourine. It seems that her happiness was in full health! He then opened up an emergency aid kit box filled with small slips of paper, pulled one out, and read to her what I believe was some sort of sweet proverb about love and happiness. The woman was absolutely delighted, leaving in joyful laughter.

We continued these checkups periodically with patients, family members, and various hospital staff members alike as we rhythmically wandered our way through the hospital until we reached a pediatric waiting room. After asking a few small children their names, each troubadour pulled simple props our of their apron pockets and commenced their silly skit about a frog, played by the sole male member of the group, who must overcome his fear of jumping high into the sky in order to go to a party he so longingly wants to attend. Although I couldn´t understand a word of the Portuguese, the students moved so fluidly, making such dramatic expressions and absurd sounds, that no one could miss the amazingly executed humor.

Next, we worked our way to the chemotherapy ward, turning a room that previously had a dull and sterile atmosphere into a small, soft parade! While these adult patients were visibly exhausted and uncomfortable, many lit up at our entrance, and it was here that us foreigners were finally able to articulately join in on the singing with “Stand by Me.” While we sang, one woman´s grown daughter snuck into the room to video our short performance and her mother´s response of pure gratitude and delight. Although this particular patient expressed more enthusiasm than the others, her reaction will forever change the meaning of this song in my life. After that, each patient in that room and the next was offered a happiness checkup and a slip of paper, and then we continued on once more.

All throughout our trips in the hallways, I was overwhelmed by the bodies we had to work through as waiting patients and their family members continued to accumulate in surprising numbers. Ashley explained to me that because Brazil has a socialized healthcare system, with very few privatized facilities, the hospitals are constantly overwhelmed, and patients often suffer for months or years before receiving non-priority treatments, such as elective surgeries like knee-replacements. As I gazed at the mild chaos around me, I couldn`t help notice that in many ways, these jammed narrow spaces resemble a packed United States emergency room, making me wonder how much worse the crowds must be in Brazilian hospitals. Even so, the UniRio students continued their singing and games, forcing out grins and giggles from the people around them. We continued dancing and singing from ward to ward, and by the end of the workshop, I found myself ready to collapse into bed. Amazingly enough, the UniRio students didn´t seem at all exhausted, and when we finally made our way back to their office, they seemed reluctant to lock everything up in the cabinet. It is rare to find so much energy, compassion, and humor in five different people all at once, and in a place so filled with sadness and pain, I felt truly privileged to see and partake in even the momentary goofiness and delight that they brought so many individuals.

Guest blogger on visiting a Brazilian prison

This student guest blogger wishes to remain anonymous.

The first thing I notice about Gabriel is his sharp hair cut, brilliant smile and the soccer ball in his hands, shuffling from one to the other. He’s full of charm and he knows it. Roughly a dozen men, all of them of various ages wear a white T-shirt, blue pants and white Havainas, and they move about on the stage inside this hollowed out church talking with the workshop facilitators. On the wall behind them is a large mural of a bible verse from Psalms. Gabriel asks me where I’m from and I spend 10 minutes trying to explain Detroit through the default references of “Ford,” “Motown,” and “Eminem.” Everyone knows Eminem. After a while he has an idea of where I’m talking about and asks if it’s near Chicago. I tell him it is and he asks, “You know Chicago Bulls?”

“Yeah,” I respond. “Derek Rose.”

“Michael Jordan,” he says now using the ball to mime Michael’s iconic pose.

I keep trying to tell him about Detroit, even though I’m from Pontiac. Gabriel is the first Brazilian I’ve met who knows anything at all about American sports. He’s a fan of Lebron James and knows how the game of football works, which is a big surprise. I tell my team is the Detroit Lions, and we make loud growling sounds. When I ask him where he is from, he drops the soccer ball, points to the ground beneath his feet and says, “I’m from Rio de Janeiro.”

Street scene in Rio

I’ve just recently graduated from the University of Michigan, and for the past two years I’ve been involved with the Prison Creative Arts Project, an organization founded on the basis of building a better community by creating art and theater with incarcerated adults and juveniles. I first found out about this program when I enrolled in Professor Ashley Lucas’ Theatre and Incarceration class the start of my Junior Year, and after my first workshop, a theatre production with Incarcerated young men at Maurice Spear Campus in Adrian, Michigan, I wanted to do more. I took another class in PCAP with Professor Lucas and Shaka Senghor called the Atonement Project, and from that class I learned about the exchange with the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro when professors Marina, Viviane, and Natália came to visit Michigan and see the work we do in the winter of 2014.

This is my second trip to Brazil. Last year’s encounter with this work at the University and with the Center for the Theater of the Oppressed as well as the community work in Maré inspired my return. Since I’ve been in Brazil, the only landmark I have visited more than once is Pedro do Sal, the Birthplace of Samba. In the early 1900’s many gatherings of minority communities were repressed and criminalized in Brazil. People would gather in residential places to express their religion, their dance, their history and culture. Pedro do Sal is one of these places, and I like to think that our work within prisons and marginalized communities is like a revival of this tradition of building community by creating art.

Outside, in the churchyard, Professor Natália explains to us that the prison isn’t segregated by crime but by faction. So every man within the walls of the prison is part of the same gang. It helps us understand the need to control violence and also the ease at which the men in the workshop work together, not to mention the prohibition on wearing colors affiliated with gangs. I don’t want the guards to think I’m affiliated with their gang, and I most certainly don’t want the men in prison to think I’m affiliated with their rivals.

As the men in the workshop perform their production on stage, I think about Gabriel and the American influences that he’s encountered. I think about the hip-hop and rap music they must have been exposed to (One of the sketches in their play is a rap), and I wonder if they know about the Bloods and Crips tennis shoes sponsored by Kendrick Lamar to promote unity, to promote community.  Off the top of my head I can’t remember what Michael Jordan’s shoes promoted. With my time in Rio coming to an end, I still ponder the meaning of liberty, freedom, and history in connection to art and theater. On the bus ride home one of the facilitators still sings one of the songs from the performance and asks me how to say these words in English.  My Portuguese not being very good I tell her, roughly, that “Art is my reason” is all I can come up with.

Guest blogger Joe Ambrose on theatre with incarcerated mothers and babies in Rio

Joe at the Top of the Cristo

Ola! I’m Joe, and I am a junior at the University of Michigan majoring in Public Policy with a minor in Intergroup Relations. I have been involved with PCAP since enrolling in Dr. Lucas’s Theatre and Incarceration course last January. Through this course, I co-facilitated a theatre and improv workshop at Cooper Street Correctional Facility in Jackson, MI. I will also have the privilege of taking Dr. Lucas and Shaka Senghor´s course, The Atonement Project, this fall, which will allow me to facilitate another wonderful workshop!

While I have traveled outside of the United States before, this abroad trip to Rio de Janeiro is my first immersive experience in another country. I started the application just hours after a friend told me about her experiences with PCAP and said she would be going to Brazil to do theatre for social change in collaboration with other university students. Surprisingly, my friends and family did not share the same excitement when I told them that I would be participating in creative arts workshops in Brazilian prisons, as well as hospitals and favelas. I have learned a lot about the stigmas and stereotypes placed on prisons and the people in which they attempt to hide from the rest of society, but I had never considered that these stereotypes are amplified when referring to foreign prisons in particular. I don’t know if this is a result of the media, or T.V. shows like “Locked Up Abroad,” but what I do know is that I have never felt more free and able to openly engage in theatre than when in these Brazilian facilities. My experiences inside of U.S. correctional facilities have involved strict policies and guards that will go to extreme lengths to make sure that the guys in my workshop aren’t “having too much fun.” Although I recognize that there is not a single prison in the world that is perfect, I have had the great honor in participating in some great programs here in Rio.

Last Tuesday, I was able to visit a facility called Materno Infantil. Materno Infantil serves as a temporary place for incarcerated mothers to continue their sentences alongside their newborns until their babies are six months at most. Having heard about past students’ experiences visiting this facility and the abundance of baby holding, I was overly excited to visit these heart-warming people. While Materno Infantil still felt like a prison (barbed wire, locked gates, armed guards, etc.), I have never seen a brighter and more beautiful landscape within the walls of a correctional facility. The staff, which was composed of almost all women, was dressed casually; there were colorful gardens, not to mention the dozens of strollers with the cutest babies scattered all over. It wasn’t more than five minutes after we entered, before I had a one-month old named Jennifer, fast asleep in my arms. As an uncle myself, it’s needless to say that I was in my happy place. Despite the language barrier, I could sense the immense amount of joy in this workshop through the wide smiles and rich laughter of the women. After singing and dancing around a circle of seven strollers, a few of my classmates, and I participated in some familiar improv games with the mothers. I had the chance to lead one call-and-response dance activity that I have previously done in other workshops. Although the women had a hard time learning the English version (as I do with games in Portuguese), we still had a ton of fun, and the women busted out some great moves nonetheless. I’ve come to learn how important theatre is because it serves as a single language and allows people to understand and relate to each other on a common ground.

The Man Himself

After two hours of games and our stomachs hurt from laughing, the workshop started to come to a close. I was able to have a verbal conversation with three of the women, thanks to our translator and friend João, who is a student at UniRio and co-facilitates this workshop. The women asked us some questions about the U.S. correctional system, including curiosity about capital punishment. But then one of the women asked us a question that I will never forget. “They want to know if you are scared of them because they are in jail,”João translated to us. I had completely forgotten that we were interacting with women who would soon most likely be separated from their children and who transferred back to another prison. Our workshop was filled with so much laughter and joy that, for a brief period of time, I had forgotten that we were in prison. I can only hope that these women felt the same way. This woman’s question proves that too many people are socialized to be afraid of people inside of prisons and that we isolate them from the rest of society rather than addressing the larger problem at hand. I will be forever grateful for the experiences I’ve had in Rio, and I look forward to continuing this not only important but necessary work in the United States.

Tchau for now,

Joe Ambrose

Joe’s beach acrobatics

Guest blogger on Legislative Theatre in Maré

This guest blogger, another student of mine, wishes to remain anonymous as the author of this post. She took both the Atonement Project and Theatre & Incarceration courses last year and has co-facilitated creative writing and theatre workshops in a men’s prison in Jackson, Michigan.

Street scene in Rio

On Friday morning, Angela, a lovely professor from UniRio, took us on a tour of the center of Rio and the old theatre district, an area full of historic architecture and buildings that were built both during and also immediately after the colonial era. We learned about the origins of the architecture and colonists’ desires to make the city seem as European as possible, but also walked past recently developed high-rise apartment buildings, looming in between colorful French balconies and baroque windows from Portugal. As a graduate student studying public policy and urban planning, I am continually fascinated by the somewhat haphazard blending of old and new, of modern and colonial that can be found throughout the city. In fact, I have seen the resonance of this uneasy dichotomy in almost everything we have done since arriving in Rio. I see the rush to modernize, to expand, to grow (just in time for the Olympics) at the same time that I see a foundation of unexamined history and marginalized communities getting left behind in all the expansion.

The very first week we were here, we had the incredible privilege of visiting one such community, the Maré favela, to witness some very meaningful theatre work being done there. We were told that Maré’s original residents were northern migrants who came to the region looking for economic opportunity and instead found themselves stranded and isolated in an area in north Rio that is now the massive Maré favela, composed of 16 different communities.

We went into Maré with the Center for Theatre of the Oppressed, an organization that has continued the work of Augusto Boal in Rio and which had been working with youth in Maré to develop a performance piece focused on the discrimination that favela residents face when they leave their community. Using a technique called legislative theatre, this performance started as a traditional forum theatre piece; in addition to be able to intervene though, spect-actors were also given the opportunity to suggest possible policies that could address the situations being acted out in front of them. At the end of the entire piece, we then all had a conversation with representatives from outside organizations about the suggested policies and reached a consensus about which policy made the most sense to pursue. The representatives present then agreed to bring that policy back to their work and begin to advocate for it.

The effortless blending of theatre and policy we witnessed was impressive. The performance was able to illustrate the problem (discrimination) in a vivid and concrete way that a policy brief or set of statistics would never have been able to accomplish. In my classes back home, we often talk about how successful policy-making usually evolves out of some kind of urgent need that citizens can emotionally relate to; it is much easier, for example, to develop environmental regulation after an oil spill has ensured that voters have been staring at slick, oil-covered animals with endearing faces and sad eyes for a few weeks on the front page of their newspapers. Watching the talented youth from Maré paint a bleak picture of the treatment favela residents face outside the favelas, however, I realized that well-done political theatre can accomplish the same thing. Theatre can draw in an audience and emotionally entangle viewers in a scene; it as the power to get people involved and passionate in a way that a news article on the same subject would entirely fail to do. While I do not know enough about current Brazilian anti-discrimination policy to know what types of solutions would be most effective, I still felt lucky to be able to observe the debate and the performance from the Maré children that was driving it.

Sitting in the favela that evening, I could not help but think of the massive amounts of money being poured into fancy new developments and stadiums all over the city and wonder why even a little of that funding could not have been used to alleviate the extreme poverty evident within the community. From the vantage point of my admittedly limited knowledge, the favelas seems to have grown out of the pieces of Brazilian past that are most uncomfortable, and I wonder if their extreme isolation is at least a partly a result of that. Like prisons, like Native American reservations in the U.S., these are communities that exist on the margins, in part because they make us uncomfortable, because in order to change them, we as a society would also need to confront the forces that created them and our own part in doing so.

View of Rio

During the prison workshop I participated in last week, one of the women asked us for a photo that they could keep as proof that someone outside cares enough about them to come visit; she said that too many people see these women as garbage being hidden away from society. It was heartbreaking to listen to her articulate this so matter-of-factly, and it echoed the refrain I heard from the men I worked with in prisons back home. It was also hopeful though, because this theatre workshop, for her, was proof that was not true. Just like the performance we watched in Maré, I was struck by the power of theatre, even the simple theatre that we have witnessed over the last two weeks, power to inform and change minds, to touch emotions and build connections. I find myself increasingly grateful for the opportunity to be a part of such meaningful work, both here in Brazil and back home in Michigan.

Guest blogger Wilder Erb on the Theatre of the Oppressed

Our group in front of a historic library in central Rio de Janeiro

My name is Wilder Erb, and I have been involved with PCAP or (Prison Creative Arts Project) at the University of Michigan for one year. During the past year as a student I was fortunate enough to be a part of the Atonement Project as well as the Theatre and Incarceration course. I applied to the Brazil exchange program for three weeks in Rio de Janeiro because I am passionate about working in prisons in Michigan as a member of PCAP. I spent the previous two semesters facilitating theatre workshops at the Cooper Street men’s correctional facility in Jackson. I firmly believe doing theatre along with other kinds of social activism work is vital to achieving community uplift. For this reason, I feel deeply invested in working for and with PCAP. Having the ability to take part in similar work in Brazil specifically with the Theatre of the Oppressed was an opportunity that I could not pass up.

Rio’s most famous landmark–Christ the Redeemer

As part of our cultural exchange here in Brazil, we work hand-in-hand with students and faculty at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, also referred to as UniRio. This partnership allows us to experience multiple perspectives of the Theatre of the Oppressed, such as sitting in on theatre performances by UniRio students, touring the Maré favela, watching full productions, going into a hospital and playing improv games with the elders, as well as getting a first hand experience of how theatre is performed within both men’s and women’s prisons. Brazilian Augusto Boal founded the Theatre of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro where the CTO or (Center Theatre Oppressed) operates as the theatre’s headquarters. Boal’s methodology focuses on emphasizing the importance of creative expression and the need for alternative forms of open dialogue to exist in spaces that traditionally repress these values. One of the experiences to date that I feel best epitomizes the Theatre of the Oppressed was traveling to the Maré favela to watch an amazing performance about how acts of discrimination based on race, the color of one’s skin, and where someone lives remains a prevalent issue in Brazilian society.

A view of Rio

Favelas, which are unique to Brazil, are designated territories that house Brazil’s marginalized poor communities that not coincidentally consist of overwhelmingly black and darker skinned peoples. These confined areas are often times surrounded by physical barriers, i.e. walls, and experience disproportionately high levels of crime, violence, gang activity and general instability. The performance put on within Maré used vibrant costumes and elaborate stage sets to tackle the problematic issues of discrimination and injustices that places like Maré experience on a daily basis. I found it very interesting how the actors and actresses used legislative theatre to express these controversial realities. One of theatre’s most powerful qualities is that it creates a space for people to come together and actively engage in discussions that otherwise would be looked down upon and viewed as inappropriate means of expression. Being a part of this exchange program has been an incredibly rewarding experience so far. Actively engaging in social activism work such as the Theatre of the Oppressed, along with having access and being exposed to places like prisons, hospitals and favelas give students the most meaningful forms of educational learning.

Signing out,

Wilder

Guest blogger Dana Pittman on forum theatre in Rio de Janeiro

Dana in Rio

Bom Dia,

I’m Dana, a junior at the University of Michigan studying Psychology with a minor in Crime and Justice. I’ve been a part of the Prison Creative Arts Project for two years and have facilitated theater workshops in male prisons as well as juvenile detention facilities. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the work I’ve done with PCAP thus far and hope to continue it in my upcoming semesters at the University.

In the days leading up to our arrival in Rio, I began feeling extremely nervous about navigating through the language barrier. I knew a little of the language from participating in weekly Portuguese lessons with our graduate student companion Anna and had been regularly using the language teaching app, Duolingo. Despite this new training and my prior experience with Spanish, I did not feel that I would have the words or the ability to effectively engage in dialogue or make the most of the experience. And our first encounter with the Theater of the Oppressed workshop didn’t calm my fears whatsoever. We sat listening to the son of a world known theater practitioner lecture in Portuguese for maybe a half hour, but it felt like an eternity. I was definite that the rest of conference would not be beneficial in any way and that I wouldn’t survive the rest of that week, must less the rest of the trip.

Dana in a group of participants from the Theatre of the Oppressed Conference

However, once it came to actually engaging in theater and watching the shows that were apart of the conference the language spoken didn’t seem to matter. The expressions of the actors could be seen in the way that they moved around, hear in the manner that they read their lines, and felt when we looked into their eyes. I definitely felt that I was able to understand what was happening in the scenes without fully understanding the words being spoken. Knowing the language quickly felt like something supplemental, rather than a requirement for enjoying the performances and appreciating the social constructs it attempted to bring to the forefront for discussion. Each of the shows followed the structure of Forum Theatre, which is one form of the methodology known as the Theatre of the Oppressed, where first the audience watches a short scene with a character being oppressed or mistreated. After seeing this scene, the audience suggests alternative actions for the oppressed character, and members of the audience take the place of the character being oppressed and go about the situation in a different way. Then the audience discusses the effectiveness and feasibility of the newest actor’s actions.

The discussions that took place revolved a lot around power dynamics, making the oppressed feel heard and attempting to make the oppressor see what he or she is doing wrong. While I didn’t quite have the words to engage in the conversations following the audience’s involvement, it was interesting to listen to everything that was shared during the dialogue. It allowed me to hear a different perspective on some social issues and opened my mind to new ways of thinking even though it was in Portuguese. Before this trip, I had thought of my pervious work with Forum Theater was interesting, but the conference has shown me that this work is revolutionary. I’m excited to continue thinking about these new concepts and ideas that came out of the discussion portion and to keep the conversation going when I return to the United States.

Picture of a favela as we drove past it

For the last day of the conference, the participants were invited to the favela (poorer or slum region) Maré. The show specifically focused on employment discrimination, people from Maré have experienced, just because they were from a favela. I became acquainted with two new friends, Léo and Bebita. Together they did their best to translate the comedy throughout the show as well as the technical language that occurred as the audience was invited to create a mock legislature council after the show.

Wilder, Marjai, Ariel, and Dana at the Botanical Garden

In the days following the conference, Léo messaged me saying, “You, and especially you, have proven that theater speaks a single language.” These words resonated with me. I was astonished that I had confirmed that to him at the same time he and his country had been demonstrating that to me. The art of theater is for everyone; no matter where someone comes from financially or regionally and no matter what language they speak.

Tchau tchau,

Dana Pittman

Guest blogger Ariel Rogan on a theatre workshop in a women’s prison in Rio

Ariel in front of a mural in Rio

Hi all! My name is Ariel Rogan and I have been involved in the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) since January of 2015. PCAP’s mission is to collaborate with incarcerated adults, incarcerated youth, urban youth, and the formerly incarcerated to strengthen our community through creative expression. Since the time I joined until April 2015, I participated in a theatre workshop at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti, MI. I co-facilitated with two other students, Jessica and Laura, and we worked each week towards a final performance. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with those amazing women. I am beyond thrilled that I was given the opportunity to extend my prison theatre work here in Brazil! When I heard about this trip, there was no contemplating whether I wanted to attend or not, and I applied right away! I could not pass down the chance to not only continue this awesome work, but to travel to Brazil as well.

This past Tuesday, we went into the prisons. I was grouped with Anna, our wonderful translator, Hannah, Caitlyn, and the workshop leader, Sergio. We went into the women’s prison, and as of now, I have only worked with women. We waited outside of the prison for at least twenty minutes before being let in. I was starting to get nervous that they would not let us in. When we finally did get in, I immediately noticed several differences between this prison and Women’s Huron Valley. The “bubble” process was not long at all here in Rio. The “bubble” is where the security guards check to make sure that you don’t have any contraband before entering the prison. In Rio, all we had to do was sign our names and walk through a medal detector, whereas in Michigan, we had to walk through a medal detector, take off our shoes and socks, show them the bottom of our feet, manifest ANYTHING we brought in (i.e. lip balm), and the guards had to pat us down. I was pretty shocked that the process was way less severe, especially considering the fact that we are foreigners. Another thing I noticed upon walking in was that the bubble was practically outside, so when we entered the prison we were still technically outdoors. Not to my surprise, the structures of the buildings were not built as well as the buildings of the prisons in Michigan. Many of the buildings were only partially indoors, if that makes sense, and I’m assuming they had no central air.

Despite the buildings’ poor structures, I noticed that it did not seem to affect the women’s attitudes. They all said, “Hi!”–“Oi!”–and smiled. There was an overall sense of kindness and what seemed to be happiness around the prison. In Michigan, while most of the women in my workshop grew to really like us, the women we passed while going to and from our workshop building did not seem happy (I could definitely see why) or like they did not want to be bothered when we would say hi to them. The women in the prison in Rio also had a much more fashionable uniform than the women in Michigan. They wore jean shorts, which were cute by the way, and comfortable t-shirts, whereas in Ypsilanti, they wore dark blue unflattering jumpsuits.

Since we can’t take any pictures of the prisons, Ariel wanted you to see this photo of the first performance we saw at the Theatre of the Oppressed Conference.

We began the workshop by introducing ourselves. When we got to my name they were all stunned and confused. They had absolutely no idea how to pronounce my name because it has a “r” right in the middle of it, and they pronounce that letter like an “h” sound in Portuguese. We all had a good laugh over that. We then played a name game to try and remember everyone’s name. In this game we stood in a circle, and one person would say another person’s name in the circle. The person who said the name would go to take the spot of the person whose name they said in the circle, but before they get to the person’s spot the person whose name was said has to say another name and start moving (I hope that makes sense). Anyhow, the game is super fun and can get silly really quickly. In addition to this game being loads of fun, it really does help to remember names. We played a few more games that stirred up lots of laughs and some that made us think. I think these games are great especially when there are new people to a workshop (us foreigners) because it definitely breaks the ice. More importantly for the women incarcerated, it gives them a chance to have a great time and to be in a space where they don’t have to follow rules and they are given a sense of autonomy.

Theatre work is so important outside of traditional theatre spaces. Before taking the Theatre and Incarceration class with Ashley winter semester, I was so interested in how this worked. I wondered how theatre and incarceration came together, and now that I have had first hand experience, I see how useful and important it is. I did not realize how complex the prison system was and all of its flaws. I used to think, well, if a person did a certain thing wrong, they should be punished and put in jail. Now that I have learned so much, my views have changed dramatically on this topic. I know that everything is not black and white and that often times things are socially constructed and not in the favor of people who are marginalized. This work allows these wonderful people to actually be treated like people, and it also gives them a sense of power. It gives them the power to create something special, to contribute to ideas, to work as a team, and to be proud of themselves. I truly think this work is essential for the sanity of some of these people. It also gives them the chance to show their creativity. I was blown away by the creativity of the women in my workshop in Michigan, and they were happy that they were given credit for their creativity. All in all, I am extremely grateful that I get to be a part of this work that changes lives!

Rio at night

Guest blogger Marjai Kamara on performances in Rio

Marjai is rising junior at the University of Michigan, majoring in the Program in the Environment. She has worked with PCAP since January 2015 and co-facilitated a theatre workshop with boys in detention in Ann Arbor.

Our class of Michigan students on a bench at UniRio

Oi gente! My name is Marjai, last semester I took the Theater and Incarceration class with Professor Lucas. I wanted to come to Brazil for numerous reasons from an early infatuation with Brazil to loving the work that we did during the semester- luckily for me it eventually worked out and I am here.

We are starting week two in Brazil  and we are adjusted more or less to our Brazilian routines! One really cool experience for me was watching a play the first week by the Center of the Theater of the Oppressed or CTO, which is a theater center that specializes in theater as means of promoting social and political change. With the audience becoming part of the show, they explore, show, analyze and transform the reality in which they are living.

The play was essentially about being black in Brazil and the struggle that people here face because of racism. For those who didn’t know, Brazil has the second highest black population in the world, after Nigeria, so it is a serious matter.  There were two plays in one essentially. One was about how Brazil holds up the mulatto as the symbol of Brazil but how it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. The other was about a girl whose boss was hating on her cabelo natural (natural hair). After that, the girl’s friend, who also had natural hair, looked at magazines and wanted long blond hair. After changing her hair, the friend was able to gain acceptance and take her natural-haired friend’s job.

I learned so much from the play. From life facts like black girls are magical in all parts of the world (I felt so much solidarity here!) to seeing some of the similarities that exist between the U.S. and Brazil and how both countries treat their black people.

Spect-actors redid plays in really amazing ways. My favorite redo was when a lady decided to essentially help to raise her friend’s self esteem by showing her that black is beautiful! That never even crossed my mind!

It was amazing to see the differences and the similarities between blackness in Brazil and in the U.S.  

The name of the place with the mural of the ship with African women inside was called “pedra do sal” or “pedra da sal” I can’t remember exactly. It used to be a place where slaves worked, then it was a “quilombo” which is a settlement of freed or escaped slaves, and then it was the birthplace of Samba!

Another amazing experience that I have had in Brazil was doing what we came here to do, visiting theater workshops!!! I, and three other girls went to a men’s workshop with 3 facilitators and 30 men. I have never done a workshop in a men’s prison, but my partners had. We discussed the differences between the U.S. and here–from being allowed to take in props in Brazil to not being strictly checked when facilitating a workshop to the differences in the facilities in both countries.

We were blessed that one facilitator spoke English and translated for us. First we all stood in a circle and passed energy by choosing someone and dramatically killing that person. If you were choosen you had to stage an over-the-top death and then return the favor by killing someone else. It was SO fun, and it loosened everyone up!

Then the men split into four groups, and after five minutes of planning, the groups acted out their skits, and we watched them. While it was hard to understand due to the language barrier, it was so amazing to see them being engaged in their art. I felt so blessed and honored to be allowed to enter that space.

There are numerous other things that we have done, from watching and participating in more plays, to seeing a final performance to end the conference in the city square, to catching a play about discrimination that exists for people who are from favelas (and they are going to take our feedback to pass legislation!), to bonding with the crew, to participating in a safe sex workshop from a professor at UCLA! I won’t bore you with all the details (already probably over the word limit). Just know that I am learning so much on this trip and am happy to be here.

This mural was found in Ipanema (which is where we are staying). It is of a famous Brazilian singer (I believe the man who made, the girl from Ipanema).

Hannah Noel’s Account of Workshop Performances from the Theatre of the Oppressed Conference in Rio

Today’s guest blogger is Hannah Noel from the University of Michigan. Hannah is an undergraduate who has taken two Prison Creative Arts Project courses (The Atonement Project and Theatre & Incarceration) and co-facilitated two wonderful theatre workshops in women’s and men’s prisons in Michigan.

So far, for Hannah Noel, it has been an interesting ride here in Rio. First, it took me forever to get to Brazil. From flights being switched around unbeknownst to me, spending nearly 2 hours on the metro because I missed my stop for the airport after spending the night in a sketchy Days Inn hotel, to being thrown into a taxi and overpaying to get to the Mango Tree Hostel. Finally on Wednesday morning around 10 am, I arrived soon to be swept away by the activities that Ashley and the rest of the group had planned. After hours without rest, I subsided to my hostel bed on the very top bunk and fell fast asleep…

Ipanema Beach in the morning

Today, Thursday, August 7^th, was absolutely wonderful. I woke up at 6 am this morning and joined Anna for a morning beach run-walk and talk. It was beautiful watching the sun rise along the coast as the waves crashed upon the sand like sounding like thunder during a summer storm. Shortly after getting back to the hostel, Yasin and I departed to the open air market a short hop and a skip away where we both bought avocados so large they filled up both of my hands.

Hannah wanted you to see how big her avocado was but forgot to take a picture of it before she ate it. Here’s the pit.

At 1 pm, Ashley gathered all of us students downstairs to embark on our daily journey. I have taken the El in Chicago, the trains in Italy, the subway in New York, and the metro in D.C., but the Brazilian subway separated itself from them all in part because we got separated trying to get off! If you’ve ever ridden a subway or metro of any sort, you know that you cannot dilly-dally too long when getting off and on. In Brazil however, if you do not sprint your ass off of the train, you better believe you won’t be getting off at your desired destination. After Anna, Yasin, Elena, Ariel, Laurel, and myself patiently waited for the rest of the group to arrive (if you hadn’t already guess it, they were left behind on the train), we ascended from the unseen hustle and bustle of Ipanema, to a city square where the aromas of food and city life bombarded our nostrils and the Brazilian sun glistened down upon us.

Just after 2pm, a sizeable group had gathered in the square either to watch the groups from the Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed, or to act in the skits. For those of you reading that don’t know about CTO, it is a place in the neighborhood of Lapa in Rio de Janeiro where members of the Theatre of the Oppressed rehearse and put on shows. Theatre of the Oppressed was started by Agusto Boal as a way for members of poorer communities to put on skits/shows detailing the injustices of Brazil’s society, and to then figure out ways in which acting out those same skits/shows in different ways could serve as rehearsals for changing society. This type of theatre was seen as a threat to the federal government, but brought together many different communities and still does to this day.

Today, we witnessed skits from the workshops that had been happening at CTO and in Maré, the largest favela in Brazil. The very first one we saw was one of my favorites—two children dressed up in circus makeup were playing when they should have been performing their acts on the street for money. The man in charge of them was furious when he saw that not only were they not doing their jobs, but also, they hadn’t made any money. They tried to get money from onlookers but had no luck and were terrified of what the circus master might do to them, so they devised a plan to scare him away. The master had a horsewhip that he used to scare the children, and when he fell asleep with it around his neck, they crept over to him and carefully removed the whip. They CRACKED! the whip, and he woke up in a terror, running and screaming away from the children until he was no longer in sight. They had defeated their oppressor!

Other skits were more serious and although they were all in Portuguese, I was still able to understand what was happening based on the movements and actions of the actors. That’s one thing that I love about theatre in general, is that you don’t necessarily need to speak spoken language of the actors to get the gist of what is happening. The last performance was an interactive one where all of the audience members and actors joined hands, and we marched in circles singing nonsensical words in Portuguese. As we marched, our circles spiraled in until we were all tightly wound and marching in place. I loved this ending because after all that we had seen, it solidified the fact that each and every one of us there today were supporting the ideas of the Theatre of the Oppressed. We came together from different backgrounds and some of us from different countries all united under the concept that by working together to illuminate the inequalities of Brazil’s society, we could make a change.

As the day winded down, I thought about how blessed I am to have such an opportunity to interact with such beautiful and interactive people, even including the students on this trip! Every day is a riveting new adventure that makes me even more proud to say that I am a part of such an incredible group of people, not just here in Brazil, but around the world.

This is Hannah Noel,

signing off.

PCAP Brazil Exchange 2015 and the Theatre of the Oppressed Conference at UniRio

Dear blog readers,

I am far from finished with blogging about my trip to Australia and New Zealand but have been so busy doing that travel and research that I haven’t caught up to myself yet. I’m now in the first week of a three week trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with a dozen University of Michigan PCAP students. I hope to find time while I’m here to write more about my travels down under, but in the meantime, my students will be guest bloggers on this site, writing about their experiences with theatre for social change in Brazil. This week we’ve been attending a conference about the Theatre of the Oppressed at UniRio (the federal university here that hosts our exchange program). Today’s blog entry comes from Anna Mester, who is my graduate assistant on this trip.

-Ashley

Joe Ambrose with Branco the Mango Tree Hostel cat

Oi! This is Anna kicking off the Brazil Trip 2015 blogs. I am the Graduate Assistant during our time in Rio, my job is to help out with the logistics, activities and translate for the students. I got involved with PCAP in the past semester, by taking the Theatre and Incarceration class and going to Women’s Huron Valley to help facilitate creative writing workshops every Saturday morning.

This past Tuesday was our first real day. We had the morning off, which I spent running errands with Ashley and took advantage of the free to time to drink fresh coconut juice on the beach, while I wrote postcards for friends and family.  Our hostel is located just one block from the beach!

In the afternoon, we met up at the hostel and

Ipanema beach

took the public bus to the Urca neighborhood at the foot of Sugar Loaf Mountain. We walked in the opposite direction to the UniRio Campus. UniRio, founded in 1979, is one of the many universities in the state of  Rio de Janeiro. We made it just in time for the keynote speech of Julian Boal. Boal is the son of the late Augusto Boal, who is the founder of the Teatro de Oprimido (Theatre of the Oppressed); the central theme of this conference.

Boal spoke beautifully about the legacy of his father’s theories since the 1970s (he also spoke quite quickly I rushed to take notes for the students, so that I could translate it into English for everyone). He began with question based on a contemporary political example. He asked: How is it possible that the Brazilian state is talking about fomenting diversity and racial inclusion, while carrying out a “Black Genocide.” His term refers to the countless young black Brazilian men and women that have been killed by the police, much like police violence in the United States. His hypothesis was that diversity is somehow compatible with capitalist means of production, which leads him to believe that diversity is not against the dominant order. Capitalism needs diversity, because it is based on hyperindividualism, which leads us to fall for the myth that individuals alone can overcome hardships and oppression, which he coined the Nike “Just do it” myth.

He critiqued his father’s theories by saying that addressing ideas is not enough, the means of production also has to be transformed. A lot of work that aims to raise awareness ends up “evangelizing”, which is why he would rather focus on the material realities of oppression and the material relationship of exploitation. He wished to transform theatre from a highly professionalized art to de-specialize it whereby all actors would rotate and play all roles. No one would have ownership over one role. His goal is not to make political theatre, rather to do theatre politically. However, he pointed to a big contradiction that still has yet to be resolved. In order to finance these projects, the directors are funded by large companies and are still dependent upon capitalist modes of production.

He ended on a beautiful note, acknowledging that he painted a bleak picture of the world, however he said critique is not antithetical to hope, it is hopeful to critique.

Following the keynote, I spent the afternoon listening to presentations of students from various universities in Brazil. A student from UniRio gave a presentation on the theatre workshop she facilitated in four penitentiaries around Rio de Janeiro. Another grad student from the University of São Paulo presented on his work holding theatre workshops with transvestite prostitutes, called Trans*Theatre. The group of researchers embarking on this project, purposefully decided to approach their research from the point of view of their own subjectivity, which led them to consider questions of identity, transportation, community, self-harm, and sex work, topics that tie the researchers personally to the issues facing the transvestite community.

Ariel, Dana, Marjai, and Wilder at the Mango Tree Hostel

Other than these enriching academic and cultural experiences, I am equally enjoying seeing the city and having time to talk with everyone on this trip. This morning, Hannah and I jogged on the beach as the sun came up over the tall buildings lining the beach. The view is motivation enough to get up at 6:30 am. Just imagine the favelas on the hill painted in a bright pink with the windows flickering like glitter.

Yesterday, we visited the botanical garden, a huge

Orchid in the botanical garden

and beautiful garden with plants and trees from all around the world. I loved the bamboos and orchids in particular, but I also managed to get some great shots of the group! I hope you enjoy!

Community Restorative Centre and Jailbreak Radio in Sydney

The view from my hotel room in Sydney. You can see the peaks of the Opera House at the right edge of the bridge.

The Community Restorative Centre (CRC)—an aptly named nonprofit in Sydney—works holistically with prisoners, reentrants, and their families from about four months prior to twelve months after a person’s release from incarceration. Providing intensive case management work for folks with a variety of needs, the organization particularly targets folks who have to navigate multiple significant risk factors, like homelessness, addiction, and mental illness. They work with family members to help facilitate transportation to visits and an understanding of the types of support that reentrants will need when they come home. Mindy Sortiri, one of the staff at the CRC, was kind enough to meet with me during my time in Sydney and explain to me a little more about what’s going on in Australian prisons. In general the Australians and New Zealanders I’ve met seem totally horrified by the lengths of prison sentences in the United States. The majority of incarcerated Australians—around 89 percent—will serve less than two years. Five percent of prisoners in Australia have a life sentence or another form of nondeterminate sentence. A life sentence here can mean natural life but seldom does. Many life sentences in Australia come with a mandatory non-parole period—a minimum number of years that a person must serve on that sentence which can range from ten to thirty-five years, though it appears that the upper limits of that range are infrequently used. Australia abolished the death penalty in 1973, and the folks who’ve mentioned the death penalty in the U.S. since I’ve been here tend to do so with a grimace and a shiver as if speaking of a form of torture from the middle ages, which in fact it is. Australians who get caught in the net of the criminal justice system do face many of the same issues encountered by their counterparts in other regions of the globe. A study produced by researchers at Griffith University in 2008 found that 42.8% of percent of folks in prisons in the state of Queensland have such low literacy skills that they could not read well enough to hold an entry level job or understand paperwork given to them by the prison system. Another study from 2014 found that most formerly incarcerated Australians will remain homeless and unemployed six months after their release from prison. Aboriginal Australians and the indigenous folks of the Torres Islands make up just 3% of the total population of the nation but comprise 28% of Australia’s prisoners. In youth detention centers 51% of those locked up are indigenous. Clearly, even with significantly shorter sentences than those we see in the U.S., Australian incarceration devastates communities and disproportionately affects people of color and those who lack education. Sounds a lot like home. The Community Restorative Center seeks to “improve our clients’ quality of life by providing practical and emotional support,” which strikes me as a noble and attainable goal. The most artistic wing of the CRC is a project called Jailbreak Radio. The program is supported by public health funders in New South Wales and broadcasts public service messages about HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, but the bulk of the radio show features poetry, music, and interviews with incarcerated folks. It seems that there’s a lot of music programming in the prisons near Sydney. Local men’s and women’s facilities in Windsor have active musical groups, and the men’s prison actually has a recording studio inside it where Jailbreak Radio frequently records segments. Several reentrants work with the show’s host Kate Pinnock to help produce Jailbreak Radio, so the program itself offers both an artistic product shared with the public and real world training and support for formerly incarcerated people. Listen to Jailbreak Radio here online to see just how great the show is.

Cell Block Theatre in Sydney

The stage in the Cell Block Theatre today.

I have a fascination with the ways in which old prisons get repurposed in new ways. I’ve heard about former prisons turning into boutique hotels, apartments, and psychiatric hospitals, all of which strikes me as depressing and unfortunate. Museums which inhabit former prison sites can eloquently honor the people who once lived and died inside them, as does Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, South Africa, but I have also seen some tasteless and unfortunate renderings of prison museums. There is a much more hopeful and innovative tradition of turning prisons into art spaces—of flying in the face of the original purpose of the building to unleash creativity. For the last ninety-three years, Sydney’s National Art School has done precisely this.

As was the case for many prisons in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the walls of the Darlinghurst Gaol in Sydney were built with convict labor. Construction began in 1822 and remained in various states of construction for the next fifty years. The first prisoners to live inside it arrived there in 1841, and the last ones left in 1914. The origins of the National Art School can be traced back to Sydney Mechanics School of Art in Pitt Street, Sydney, in 1843. The Art School moved to occupy the former Darlinghurst Gaol in 1922, where it has remained ever since.

Deborah Beck was a student at the National Art School in the 1970s. She studied painting and later went on to become a faculty member at her alma mater. During her time teaching at the school, she encountered boxes of photos and archival materials about the history of the Darlinghurst Gaol stashed in basements and odd offices, and she began to realize that no one else had documented or protected the historical record of her beloved school. Realizing that she had stumbled upon a significant archive, Beck became the official historian of both the prison and the school. Today she’s preserved over four thousand items—both artistic and historical—in the pristine archive and collections room, which she oversees in the top corner of one wing of the school.

Beck worked with the state records office in Sydney to identify glass plate negatives which referred to the Darlinghurst Goal. The records of all the historic prisons in the city had been mixed together, and no one but Deborah knew which ones had to do with Darlinghurst. Her extensive research led to the publication of a book on the history of the Darlinghurst Gaol and the National Art School, entitled Hope in Hell (Allen & Unwin 2005). This official history of the various lives of this place up until 1975 has aided the school’s defenders in their repeated struggles to keep the historic prison as the site of the National Art School. Its prime location and picturesque setting make it a desirable property, and the government has made moves on multiple occasions to take the site back from the National Art School.

As it stands today, the National Art School inhabits the former Darlinghurst Gaol in quite a charming way. The floors were removed from the tiers of the cellblocks, opening up high ceilings and beautiful stone walls with the remnants of the former floors still showing and the former windows and their iron bars intact but paned with modern glass. Painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, ceramics, and drawing have their own buildings, and a lovely and spacious gallery occupies and entire building.

One of the original windows of the Darlinghurst Gaol, bearing traces of the original blue paint that covered the interior of the cells, now part of the Cell Block Theatre.

The building that most interests me, naturally, is what is known as the Cell Block Theatre—a lofty and airy space with excellent acoustics—the former women’s section of the prison has served as a working performance space for decades. Katharine Hepburn announced that it would become a theatre in 1955, and since then its stage has been graced by a broad range of musicians, dancers, and actors. The roof has been replaced and a stage built into one end of the space, but the building’s life as a prison remains clearly visible. The original jail doors hover eerily on each of what would’ve been the cellblock tiers above the stage, and traces of the blue paint that used to cover all the prison’s walls remain around certain windows. The National Art School doesn’t train students in the performing arts, but the Cell Block Theatre, since its opening, has been a popular venue for music, theatre, and dance and private events.

After attaining a master’s degree in history, Beck won a New South Wales history prize for her second book called Set in Stone (New South Publishing 2012)—this one a history of the Cell Block Theatre. The beautiful volume is replete with production photos and the posters and playbills for shows staged in the space. Unfortunately, both of Beck’s books are difficult to come by. I purchased my copies at the charming coffee shop on the campus of the National Art School, but I don’t know where else one might easily find them. That said, the school itself and the Cell Block Theatre in particular are well worth a visit when one is in Sydney. They–and Deborah Beck herself–reminded me that incarceration doesn’t have to be the end of the story—that we humans are indeed capable of making beauty in a place where suffering once reigned.

This blog post has benefited from the thoughtful editing of Deborah Beck. Thank you, Deborah, for this and for all of your work on the history of this fascinating place!

Art Gallery of New South Wales

When I wandered into the stunningly beautiful Art Gallery of New South Wales, I had just arrived in Sydney, was feeling a bit woozy from the time change, and hadn’t yet wrapped my mind around being awake on the other side of the world while my loved ones gently slumbered at home somewhere in a nighttime I could not see. That said, I was still really excited to be in Sydney and wanted to see what I could see while keeping myself awake long enough to attempt to get onto a schedule more copasetic with this time zone. An art gallery seemed like a low key place to see some sights and learn a little about Australian culture. My first realization upon entering the place was that I could not name a single Australian visual artist. Thankfully, I was alone and didn’t need to admit this to anyone and have since remedied that profound area of ignorance. I now can remember the name of painter Rupert Bunny–an early twentieth century Australian who did some rather large and charming portraits and scenes of women from his era.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales is home to a diverse set of collections, which the gallery has been kind enough to photograph and make available on their website so that you, too, can see some of the extraordinary art that I encountered. I’ll also include photos here that I took of some pieces which stood out to me, but if you seek these works of art out on the gallery’s website, you’ll find much better images.

“An Athlete Wrestling with a Python” (1888-1891) by Lord Leighton Frederic

As a herpetologist’s daughter, I’ve seen a good number of pythons in my day, but this was the first representation I’d ever seen of someone wrestling one. Is than an Australian thing? I have no idea, but it made for a very striking and beautiful statue.

“The Coming Home” (1904), Hans Heysen

This piece, and many others by Australian painters in this collection,  reminded me very much of a lot of the Texas art that hangs in parents’ home. Imagery of cattle and farm life recurred frequently, as did ranching landscapes which easily could’ve been Texas were it not for the appearance of kinds of trees that we don’t have in my home state.

“Untitled (Tingari Story at Walungurru)” (1981), Ronnie Tjampitjinpa

I’d never seen aboriginal art and was impressed with the way in which the graphic patterns in it made me as a viewer feel like I was falling into many of the paintings. This could be attributed to jet lag, I’m sure, but there’s a depth and texture to this style of work that’s ill captured in images of it. You really have to see it in person.

“Interior with Wardrobe Mirror” (1955), Grace Cossington Smith

This piece of impressionistic Australian art by Grace Cossington Smith was really lovely to see. The colors are even more vibrant than they appear here.

“The Inmate” (1963), Charles Blackman

This painting caught my eye both because it’s striking and because it’s titled “The Inmate.” I did a bit of digging around online to try to find out where the title of this piece comes from, and though I didn’t get an answer to that question, I did discover that Charles Blackman was a terribly interesting and influential painter–one of the Antipodeans who were a Melbourne group of painters who protested abstract art. This painting might have nothing whatsoever to do with prison, but to me it feels like an apt representation of incarceration. The sad or possibly determined disposition of the woman and the blurred space where her mouth ought to be gives a sense of strife but a will to survive in spite of it.

I saw far more in the gallery than I could share here with you now and loved every minute of my time there. I’m now very interested in reading up on Australian artists and their lives, so if anyone has any good books on that subject to recommend, please send me titles of things I should read!

Arts and Culture in Sydney: Day After Day, It Reappears

Whenever I travel to a new place, I do my best to immerse myself in the local culture.  This might take a variety of forms–some of them more profound than others. Throughout my Australian adventures, I have been listening to way too much of the band Men at Work, which was a big deal when I was growing up in the 1980s. The video of their bit hit “Down Under” from 1981 is so funny that I had to include it here:

My loftier cultural pursuits on this trip have included reading Australian novelist Jessica Anderson‘s lovely Tirra Lirra by the River from 1978, which my very thoughtful husband gave me as a traveling gift. It’s an excellent book to read while on a journey because the narrative follows the mental wanderings of protagonist Nora Porteous, who travels a fair amount herself. I’ve been quite engrossed in it for the last few days in the meager moments I’ve had for reading, and I shall miss it when I’ve finished it tonight.

The main reading room at the State Library of New South Wales. Couldn’t you just die with joy? Those are books in three tiers of balconies running around the central atrium. It’s much more beautiful in person.

If I lived in Sydney, I would spend inordinate amounts of time at the breathtaking State Library of New South Wales which houses over five million items in its astounding collection. I stumbled upon the building quite by accident in my wanderings around town and thought I’d died and gone to a book lover’s paradise. The library was founded in 1826, and like many of the large buildings in this part of Sydney, it has a grandeur that you must see in person to feel the full effects of its magnificence.

I spent so long wandering the library’s exhibitions and halls that I ended up not seeing as much of the gorgeous Royal Botanic Gardens next door to the library as I’d meant to see that day. It was getting dark by the time I emerged from the library–a sensation all academics know so well that it’s oddly familiar even in a foreign land where folks drive on the wrong side of the road and eat inexplicable things like vegemite.

Here I am in the Royal Botanic Gardens with a very impressive cactus behind me.

But the gardens! Oh the gardens! So lovely and so diverse. I saw plants that looked like things I’d previously only seen in Hawai’i and Cuba, and there’s an extraordinary fern collection and a huge garden of succulents. As a desert creature myself, I am always drawn to cacti and other desert plants, and I was particularly impressed with this large apple cactus which towered over me.

On my first afternoon in Sydney I spent a good four hours at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Like the glorious library and botanical gardens, it’s free to the public. There’s something really beautiful about throwing wide the doors to the best parts of your nation’s culture and not making people pay to see it. I have so much to tell about the gallery itself and the marvelous art within it that it shall have to wait for another post because my mother has been complaining that I’m not getting things onto the blog fast enough. So sorry! I’ll try to do better.

Who Can It Be Now? It’s a Wombat!

Wombat at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney.

I’d intended to report chronologically on my Australian adventures and will endeavor to provide a fairly linear account of what I’m doing here, but I couldn’t resist jumping ahead a few days in my storytelling to report that I have seen the cutest of Australia’s natural wonders—get ready for it—THE WOMBAT! I actually encountered a couple of different varieties at the fabulous Taronga Zoo in Sydney, and my favorite marsupial did not fail to please. More on wombats throughout these chronicles from down under will surely be forthcoming, but I just couldn’t wait for you to see how precious a wombat really is. So chubby! Such a fine nose! This specimen was enjoying a carrot during my visit to the zoo.

One further digression before I get back to my tale, you must check out the Periphery—a really great online literary publication which has previously published great work by Chris Dankovich who has also had quite a few pieces in PCAP’s Michigan Reivew of Prisoner Creative Writing. In addition to reading Dankovich’s story (and basically anything you find anywhere that Dankovich has written because he’s that good), you should take a gander at this piece that my very talented husband Phil Christman wrote about novelist and journalist Renata Adler, who, as Phil so eloquently argues, is well worth reading herself.

Back to the other side of the world! Picking up my journey where my last blog post left off, I arrived in Sydney a little after 6 AM on what was July 2 here but still July 1 in my native land. The sun didn’t rise for another hour or so, and when it did, it was startling because my body felt like it was night but all of a sudden was being asked to begin a new day.

Here I am in Sydney!

It’s winter in Australia, which seems to trouble the locals greatly. They shiver and exclaim how cold it is and apologize to me as though they had done me some great offense in conjuring up clear skies and heavenly light with a bit of chill in the air. The weather has been mostly in the 50s during the day in Sydney, and the sun shines more brightly here now than it does in the height of summer in Michigan. I’m told that the ozone layer above Australia has suffered a good deal of damage, which is a great shame, but having survived a particularly cold couple of winters for the last two years in Michigan, I appreciate a good, strong ray of sunlight, even as I try not to dwell on our earth-wrecking habits as a species. When I tell folks in Sydney that in a few weeks I’ll make my way down to Hobart—a city on the island of Tasmania which is Australia’s southernmost state—my Australian friends wince and tell me that it’s been colder there than it ever has in the last sixty years. The internet (or interweb as I’ve heard Aussies say) has been showing lows in the 30s in Hobart—winter temperatures which would cause my University of Michigan students to run around in shorts and throw outdoor parties. My personal feelings about the cold have always tended to land squarely alongside those of my new friends down under, but I’m realizing for the first time since I’ve moved to the Midwest that I actually am more able to withstand the cold than someone else on earth! I dread the Michigan winters and complain just as bitterly as the Australians are doing now, but in this beautiful land of wombats and perpetual sunshine I stand out as a tough and wizened survivor of real winters. No one at home would ever believe that there was another person on earth who has a lower tolerance for the cold than I do, but there it is. Australia is a land of wonders.

My residence in Sydney has been a very comfortable Holiday Inn in the charming neighborhood of Potts Point. Here and in several other residential neighborhoods through which I’ve wandered, the homes, apartments, and backpackers’ hostels have lovely little balconies with intricate wrought iron railings, reminiscent of those you might find in New Orleans but in a distinct style of their own. Sydney has a delightful architectural mix of very modern buildings and large, old stone edifices like those you might find in London. The colonial hand is evident throughout the city, which startled me more than it should have. Australia seems like such a far outpost of the British empire that I didn’t expect to find the Queen on postage stamps and currency, but there she is—blue hat and all.

I’m still struggling to wrap my mind around Australia’s current political link to the United Kingdom. As I understand it, the Australian prime minister doesn’t exactly report to her Majesty, but the Queen does appoint a regent of some sort—called the Governor-General—whom she usually selects based on the Australian prime minister’s recommendation. However, this has more substance than the mere form of a shadowy monarchical figurehead. In 1975 the Governor-General exercised a never before used right to fire the Australian prime minister, install a temporary leader, and hold new elections for a permanent replacement. In an even more bizarre twist, in the subsequent vote the Australians overwhelmingly elected the gentleman whom the British had installed as their temporary leader. The prime minister who was thrown out must have been hugely unpopular, but it still seems like Australians might have been righteously upset about that heavy handed of a British intervention in their independent governance. I read only a few sentences of the history of this remarkable political upheaval and cannot pretend to have even the faintest grasp of what was really going on there, but it startles me to think that in such recent history the Aussies were not more fiercely protective of their independence. In 1986 the Australia Acts finally removed the British’s right to intervene in Australian government. It’s a strange and complex history.

Then there’s the most bizarre tale I’ve heard of Australia’s history. In 1967, Harold Holt, the sitting Prime Minister, disappeared into the ocean at a place called Cheviot Beach and was never seen again. No body was ever recovered. How is it that the head of state of such a large nation in such a recent period of world history could have vanished into the sea? Furthermore, why hadn’t I ever heard about this until I read Bill Bryson’s delightful travelogue In a Sunburned Country?

I digress. I’ve promised to tell you of my adventures in Sydney, and so I shall. My musings on Australian weather, culture, and history grow out of my fascination with the people and place I am encountering here. The wonders, great and small, rush upon me, and my thoughts and words go wandering.

After checking into my hotel in Potts Point with a quite stunning view of the harbor, the Sydney Harbor Bridge, and the glorious Opera House, I set about exploring and went in search of food and some much needed coffee. I wandered in the direction of the large clustering of beautiful public parks and gardens in the heart of Sydney, conveniently located within walking distance of my hotel. I found a restaurant called the Pavilion on the edge of a huge expanse of green called the Dominion (a lot less intimidating than it sounds in U.S. parlance).

As I sat in the sunshine and ate a tasty meal, I had my first encounter with Australian wildlife. Some really cute brown birds sat on the backs of the other empty chairs at my table and talked to me while I ate. They were quite polite and had a good deal to say. There’s quite a lot of birdsong in the public parks of Sydney, and it’s unlike listening to birds in the U.S. Many different birds were talking in the park that day, and their songs were strange and melodious. When the little brown, chubby birds who were sitting with me started to talk, they puffed up big and fluffy and returned to their regular sleek appearance when they quieted down. After they’d said what they came to say, they fluttered off to talk to someone else.

Needing more than a regular dose of caffeine to see me through the early stages of jet lag, I ordered a second latte. It was delivered to my table while I was reading my book. As soon as the waitress stepped away from my table, two very fast and brightly colored parrots landed on my table, snatched up the unopened sugar packet from my saucer, and leapt over to

Parrots, eating my sugar.

the chair next to me where they skillfully opened the packet and devoured the sugar. I was too fascinated to shoo them away, but they quickly left once they’d finished their snack. They had obviously done this before. Just as the parrots were departing, a white ibisy-looking thing about a foot and a half tall, walked past my ankles. I tried to take a picture but wasn’t fast enough. I stood up to turn to follow it for a better shot, and as soon as I stood, a fleet of the chubby brown birds landed on my table, ready to finish my half-eaten breakfast. I let the ibis go and resumed my seat to guard my breakfast. The chubby birds departed but looked at me like I’d done them wrong.

In my next post, I’ll tell you all about the fabulous New South Wales Art Gallery and its treasures.

Large ibis-looking thingy.

Research from a Land Down Under

For the last two and a half years, I’ve been trekking around the globe whenever my teaching schedule permits in order to learn as much as I can about theatre programming in prisons around the world. I’ve just begun my last big international research trip for the book I’m writing and will be spending a little over three weeks exploring Australia and New Zealand.

All my life, I’ve wanted to see Australia. In literature and film, I’ve been enchanted by tales of the vastness of its deserts, the strangeness of its wildlife, the decadence of its drag queens. It’s history of incarceration is as interesting and unique as its natural wonders. Australia is the only nation founded as a penal colony. Before the buildings we call prisons were ever erected on this continent, the British sent ships of captives and sailors to a land so distant and difficult to settle that landing upon its shores was a form of imprisonment. Those first settlers had no hope of a return passage to England, and the only lives they had known prior to their exile were gone from them forever. The sailors who journeyed with the imprisoned fell to the same lot as their wards and were equally punished alongside the men they were set to guard. Many of those sentenced to life in Australia were guilty of very minor offences—Bill Bryson remarks about one man who was sent across the globe for the offence of impersonating an Egyptian—and the effect of this was a deportation of a sizable chunk of England’s poor.

This narrative of incarceration as a strategy for class and race containment recurs again and again all over the world. Though no one comes close to the horrific rates of incarceration in my home country, New Zealand has one of the next highest per capita incarceration rates in the world, precisely because they’ve ravaged their indigenous population. The Maori make up only 15% of the population of this island nation yet form 51% of their prison population. Michelle Alexander wasn’t just describing the U.S. when she wrote about prisons as the new Jim Crow. In fact, there’s not much that’s new about racism, class consciousness, and fear driving systems of punishment. I’m newly struck by this sadness in each country whose prisons I visit.

That said, I am equally struck by the generosity and kindness that prison theatre makers and volunteers have shown me in every place that I have traveled to do this research. I’ve only just arrived in Australia, and the folks in Sydney have been extraordinarily kind. It seems to me that volunteering in prisons, particularly in ways that engage one’s creativity, makes people more considerate of one another in every place we encounter one another in the world. When you intimately understand the ways in which human beings have calculatedly stripped one another of dignity and freedom, it makes one want to treat those around one with as much respect and thoughtfulness as we imperfect beings can muster. I am immensely grateful to all the folks I’ve encountered in my years of travel who have made time for a perfect stranger who asks all sorts of probing questions about the sensitive work that they do under immensely difficult circumstances.

Many more ruminations about prisons are doubtless forthcoming as I chronicle this trip, but for now I’d rather talk about the bizarre experience of getting to the other side of the world. It’s 8:30 in the morning as I write this from a charming Sydney café where I’ve had a fabulous breakfast. Many restaurants in Sydney serve breakfast until early afternoon, and I could definitely get used to this. Meanwhile, it’s yesterday where I live in Michigan—around 6:30 PM—which puts me a day ahead of my loved ones who are presently living the past while I wander about making new friends tomorrow, which feels very much like right now.

Dr. Who would call this one of those timey wimey thingies, and there are certainly aspects of being in Australia that feel rather like science fiction. For starters, one flies in perpetual darkness from Los Angeles to Sydney and arrives two days after you’ve started. I realize that this has something to do with crossing the international dateline, but I understand that in the same way that I comprehend quantum physics or my relationship with Time Warner Cable. I had a window seat on the flight to Sydney, and though the middle seat was mercifully empty, I had a rather chatty companion in the aisle seat of my little row. Mary is a fifty-something Lebanese Australian housekeeper with four children, one of whom had just been married in Michigan. She was returning home to Sydney after about five weeks of travel in the U.S., including a lengthy stay at her brother’s home in Detroit. You may rightly assume that I know all of this because Mary saw fit to tell it to me. I am the sort of person to whom strangers tell the stories of their lives, especially when we happen to be seated next to one another on any form of public transit. I have no idea what it is about me that causes the ready unburdening of others’ souls, but it happens so routinely that my mother used to greet me at the airport by asking me to point out which friends I’d made on my journey.

This gift of mine is particularly acute when I am seated next to anyone over the age of fifty. Women wish to adopt me as an extra member of their families, and men want to talk me into going back to their hotel rooms upon arrival in whichever place the plane, bus, or train is landing. This was a particularly acute problem when I was in my teens and twenties and thankfully appears to have waned a bit in the last few years. That is not to say that folks on public transit talk to me any less, but I am propositioned less often by men. I’m sure this has something to do with arriving at the ancient state of being in my mid-thirties—an age which I’m loving but about which the sort of men who try to pick up younger women are less excited. I’ve also now had a decade to practice my look of disgusted impatience with men who begin this line of inquiry with me. An air of haughty self-possession can go a long way to chasing off unwanted flirtation.

This, however, has absolutely no effect on men or women who just wish to tell you about themselves, and the fact that I find most people absolutely fascinating does little to dissuade those who wish to talk to me, even when I would rather have this chat at some other time when I am not exhausted to the point of near collapse. Mary from the flight to Sydney needed help with filling out her immigration and customs form. I was relieved to find that she had not recently been exposed to Ebola and that she was not carrying illicit drugs or over 40,000 Australian dollars on our flight. It’s amazing what intimate things you learn when filling out someone’s immigration forms. When she wasn’t telling me about her family, she laid across the empty seat between us with her head in my lap and dozed, only to wake up again and warn me about how cold it is in Sydney these days. Bless the hearts of people in Sydney! It’s in the 50s here, and they’re all shivering. Mary was lucky to have visited Michigan in June. A February trip might have killed her. In keeping with my mother’s admonitions about how dirty airplanes are, I liberally wiped all the surfaces I might touch over the course of our flight with a Clorox wipe and offered one to Mary, who thought I was the funniest person alive for doing this. She gleefully wiped all of the MERS, MRSA, and whatever other forms of vile death lurk on germy airplane surfaces off her arm rests and tray table with exclamations that I was just like her! I thought this was amusing because she was simultaneously thinking me ridiculous for this precaution and likening me to herself. Perhaps believing oneself to be ridiculous is the key to happiness because Mary thoroughly enjoyed herself throughout our trip.

She kept asking me to raise the shade on our window so that we could see what it looked like outside, and each time the darkness of the night was astounding. We didn’t even see stars or clouds, it was just sheer blackness. I found myself pondering why there are no stars on this side of the earth, for surely there must be. There was only one episode of Dr. Who that I can recall when something terrible made the stars disappear, and rather than contemplate this further, I closed my window shade and offered Mary a stick of Juicy Fruit. She was so delighted that I would share my gum that she offered to take me home with her for coffee and breakfast upon our arrival in Sydney. Though I would have genuinely loved to have seen her home and appreciated her hospitality, I had to decline because I knew that my husband was somewhere across the earth anxiously calculating the hours until my arrival and that if I didn’t get to my hotel and email him as quickly as I could, he would presume that one of those dreadful Dr. Who things had indeed befallen me somewhere over a vast expanse of ocean.

We landed in Sydney in the unrelenting darkness with the watery lights of the city beneath us. Then my adventures really started.