 Why don't we start, you know, just with a little bit of of an introduction. The topic for today is working with incarcerated populations, co-creating theater with them. I'll read the description of the session because it gives us guys an opportunity to share collective experiences and also open it up for some of you guys that may have some of the same experiences to share with the room. We'll explore and discuss the effects of the program as on the populations and prisons. It'll promote a, you want to just have a collaborative learning experience here. So if anyone at any point wants to share out some of the stuff that they've done, that would be great. My name is Freda Bradley Ballantyne. I'm from the old little theater. I'm the Director of Arts Engagement and I'd like to just introduce this man. Can you tell us your name? Yeah, who are you from? Yeah, I'm Johnny Stallings. I live in Portland. I have a non-profit organization called Open Parts, Open Minds. We have programs in three prisons in Oregon. I've directed six Shakespeare plays at Two Rivers Correctional and one of my star actors is to my left, Alan Mills. He introduced me. I'm Alan Mills. And I think I performed in five of those plays for being transferred out and here I sit on the old home of you. You played Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream and Festi in 12th Night. And in our first production, which was Hamlet, we had four Hamlets. He was one of our Hamlets and he also played Laertes. Mara? Good morning. I'm Mara Sidmore. I'm with Actors Shakespeare Project in Boston and I'm the Director of Education Programs, Projects and Partnerships. And we work with the juvenile justice system in the state of Massachusetts and we work all across the state, mostly on Lisa, but all across the state with youth who work across the state. I'm Scott Jackson. I'm the Executive Director of Shakespeare Notre Dame and I've had a program going at Westville Correctional Center, which is indeed in his largest state prison for about four years now. We're also the home of the Shakespeare Prison's network. And with this guy here, we staged the first two Shakespeare Prison's conferences in November 2013 and January 2016. Looking forward to the third, we'll talk about it. I'm Kurt Toffen, I'm the Founder of Shakespeare Behind Bars. I've been working in the correction system for 22 years. We have programs in Kentucky and also programs in Michigan. Great. I'd like to take this time to ask a question out here to the audience. How have you all been working with incarcerated populations? How did it become a priority in your organization or practice? So if it isn't a priority within your organization and practice, what's preventing it from being a priority? Now, if you guys could just partner up, preferably if you're in the same organization, you could split up and not talk to each other. Can you discuss that one yourself for a quick second? So I'd just like to call on a couple of people and ask what was talked about. What did you guys talk about? Do you have a program? Well, Brian is currently working with a loose situation really with the juvenile justice system in Cincinnati, but is interested in starting a program with adults in perhaps with the vision of saying how could they come together and have communication through the art form. So he's interested in the business model and is this a sample and does it work and how do you fund it just to know if it's something that I'm going to get into. Can I get that right? That's great. How about you guys? What is it a priority within your organization? Are you guys trying to find a way to make it happen? No, no, for Williamson University of U.S. School, I think it's such a nice place to happen on the season and not on the top end. We have not had any passing that's sort of been considered. It's something that interests me the most in communicating with the public. It's something that interests me personally as a director. What about in the back, you guys? These are teens from Berkeley Rep School Theater, which I happened to have started back in 2000. I'm now with Technotic Theater Project. We don't work in prisons, but it was part of my job interview process to say that I want to make it a priority in all my previous positions. I've worked with juvenile incarcerated youth, but I do playwriting programs. So I go in and I teach playwriting residencies and then bring in professional actors to do readings for the prison population. What about in the back for a year? I'm an actor who helped pilot a program with Delaware Shakespeare Festival last year. So we were in touch with you guys, and we really looked at the 10,000 Things model and David Strathley, our artistic director, was an amazing, generous, patient man because I think leading up to the actual program did a year's worth of community engagement work personally with the different leaders in the Delaware area and with the different demographics that we were looking at and actually took a long time to actually create the program and really invested in actors that really cared about the mission. So we're doing it again this year. So it was a great time for everyone and now I'm here to try to learn about how to build an even more. I just wanted to start it off. I guess I'm going to start off with you, Alan, and just to talk a little bit about your experience with this program and the programming of work. How, and just if you could tease out how it's affected you a little bit, how the programming, how you've been affected by it? Well, I joined Johnny's group in, I think, 2007 or 2008, and before that my career was on a very different trajectory. And I was actually at kind of a turning point where I was looking for something else. I was looking for something new. I was in kind of a rut of hanging out with bad people, people that weren't good for me and trying to impress them for the wrong reasons. And I found Johnny's group and that was interesting to me. It started out as a dialogue group and then it led into the plays and stuff. But I found that throughout that, the stimulation of performing and rehearsing and stuff it affected other areas of my life. I draw, you know, visual artists. I drew a lot of portraits and wild life scenes. And I noticed that when I was rehearsing and performing that creativity led into other areas of my life, into the visual arts. And I felt more inspired. I think that the juvenile, I know there's a couple people mentioned the juvenile stuff working with them. I was incarcerated as a juvenile as well. So I had been going kind of along a poor path. So I think outreach to the juvenile crowd, getting them before they go into big boy prison is really important. But I think there's a certain level of maturity that people have to get to. For me it had to be a turning point. I had to find, I had to realize in my life that something wasn't right and I had to look for something else. And for most, and for some people, for a lot of people that's kind of what it is. It's like, well I need to do something else with my life. And this kind of, this R2 prison thing kind of helped jumpstart that. So from then on I stopped hanging out with the old crowd. I cut sides with all of them. I started hanging out with more, the people that were in the, developed a camaraderie with the people that were in our group. A type of collaboration that doesn't exist anywhere else in the prison. And I think that really, it's really beneficial for anybody, anybody incarcerated who's part of that program. So the results kind of speak to themselves when we look at the individuals who are graduating from those programs. And then getting out and being your next door neighbors. I think more prison outreach should be done by the states and stuff because that's what it comes down to. Who do you want living next door to you? The guy who's been in there on bread and water sleeping on a concrete pad. Or the guy who showed a little bit of compassion and was allowed to develop some empathy and relationships with other people in a positive way. Thanks. Johnny, I just want to be, I talked about what success, you know, looked like. How do you measure it? You pushed back on that. Can you talk a little bit about that? Well, yeah, just when we came up here this morning, either free success came up, and I know that when you're applying for grants, maybe some of you have, many of you have applied for grants. One of the things they want to see is evidence-based, you know, they want you to prove statistically that what you're doing is working. And what I feel, I guess I have to say that my philosophy of directing is very simple. Love the heck out of it. And that has applications even outside of theater. And like from the very beginning, before we even started doing theater, like if you get together in a room with people and something beautiful, so that we're all hoping for that this morning. That's success. You can't, because you learn over time, you can't magically change everybody's whole life trajectory instantly by putting on a play. But you can love somebody, and that's perfect. Goes deep, can't be erased, and is very successful. Mark, can you talk a little bit about what you've been doing, what's been done so far? Sure. So we partner with the Department of Youth Services. It's different, I think, the juvenile justice system work. It's very different from work with adult presidents, and I've noticed that said various conferences. The work tends to be harder because the population is changing so quickly. So as an adult, when you're committed, you're typically given a sentence, and you serve that sentence for a length of time in one location. For young people, they are, first of all, assessed. So they go to a detaining center, and then they go to an assessment center, and then they go to the place that they're going to actually serve their sentence. And there are things happening from day to literally day to day. So as teaching artists, we have to be extremely flexible and have no attachment to outcome whatsoever. Because we may start with a group of ten young people in a facility, and the very next day, we might have two. And the very next day, we might have five. And we have to really attest our skill to be really in the moment and able to see what the rule needs at any moment in any given time. I think that we're fortunate in terms of business model, because this wasn't always the case, but we've been doing this work long enough for about a decade now. But originally, we just literally knocked on a door and said, hey, we want to work inside, can we? And talk to staff and teachers who were in facilities teaching, because young people go to school while they're in prison, of course. So that was sort of like, can we come in? And people were generally like, sure, you know, and most of the time. And so we began working inside without any restrictions. The lovely thing is that now the Department of Youth Services works with a subcontractor that's an education company called the Commonwealth Corporation in Massachusetts. And they actually have an arts program coordinator position that serves the state and partners with us and many other youth arts organizations to actually set up their residencies and then help us troubleshoot as we go along. So that's a really wonderful thing. At the same time, as you might imagine, because we're working in a system, a system that involves a lot of hierarchy and structure and things taking a very long time, there's a lot of red tape that we run into. And so our biggest challenge as well as blessing is that relationship with DYS and Comcor, the subcontractor, and maintaining that relationship all the time. And it's kind of like, in a way, they're part of our theater family and that sometimes we got to do good at with them and sometimes we got to be patient with one another and they're kind of part of our family. In terms of what's happening inside, we actually have a, we call it a mash-up approach. So we use Shakespeare as a launching pad. We usually do pick a play. We take the themes of that play and then we do a series of exercises depending on what the young people need. We could involve improv exercises around the themes of the play. It could involve writing, a lot of writing. We like them to generate text, so it's a co-created, devised piece together that we make around a particular play of Shakespeare. We're starting to dabble a little bit in other areas. So for instance, right now, we see in a girl's facility where we're actually in a history class for the first time and so the teaching artist is doing a lot of work on post-modern feminism and sort of historical women's rights and taking that as a launching pad. And I don't know what she's going to be even text-wise or not, but she'll create a new series out of it. Have you thought about doing that? That sounds really interesting. Have you thought about doing that on male populations? Because so many women that are incarcerated have been victims of domestic violence. Have you thought about doing any kind of feminism class for the male juveniles? That's a really great question. I don't know what their curriculum is currently. We're somewhat dependent on the teaching staff themselves and what the relationship is there because they do dictate the curriculum as does in some ways the state. But I love that idea. I will say that we also have a unique program in that we're inside but we also recruit those young people so that when they are, I think you hit on this a little bit, when they're released back into the community we actually can pay them to come and take our programs and learn the skills of theater artists as a job. So we're hiring them to come and work for us. And they do our programs alongside all the other young people that we recruit from the city of Boston and the surrounds. And our goal there is to do what you're saying. So we do anti-oppression work with the young people. We actually train them in thinking through that lens. And when I say anti-oppression, that includes everything. So we're not just talking about anti-racism. We're not just talking about being aware of feminism. We're talking about any level of oppression and awakening them to understanding the systems of oppression that exist in our society so that we can have those conversations about what is it like. And many of our young people have been in very different situations and in being able to dialogue with each other. And one of our former incarcerated young people has said this very recently to us, because I could talk to the girls in the room who were in rehearsal together, my mind was open to what they have been through and how I now can be as a young man to support a change in culture. I want to go to Scott because we haven't heard from you. How do you get buy-in within your, you're at a big, you know, super big organization. How did you get buy-in within and how do you continue to get buy-in within an organization like Notre Dame? Sure, so in the beginning it was really tough. I think that anyone who's aspiring at any level to do this work, there's a certain personal investment that is unexpected, I think, when you find just how consistent you have to be in this work. This isn't something where you can just fly in and fly back out. You've got to commit for years, not months, not weeks, not days. So once you make that personal investment to yourself and once you start at the ground foundational level to build a program up, you're going to need partners, right? You're going to need external partners. So being part of this larger machine, as we were just saying with Notre Dame, a lot of my work kind of gets lost in translation because it's not pertinent to research, to someone's pet products. However, Notre Dame being Catholic University is committed to social justice. And so when I bypass actually the provost lines and the faculty of Notre Dame, and I go straight to the president's office and find where the main mission is housed and actually served at the university, it's protected from the very top of the food chain at the university. And so all the support filters down from that acknowledgement at the very top. And then from that, I make sure that I'm holding true. And I'm not a Catholic, but the dogma of Catholic social tradition and teaching and serving the common good and starting with the least of us first. And these things all translate perfectly to the work that I'm performing. And so from that, for four years now, what was kind of a... Oh, we're livestreaming, aren't we? It was kind of a contentious project with certain people who were in authority for me has become something that those people are actually... It's their case example, the example of Notre Dame's mission and action to the performing arts. So seeing a total reversal of that. It's a unique situation because I am part of a larger institution, but I think that the lessons learned can be applied to any theater organization as well. Once folks are exposed to the work, once folks directly engage with the work, because if you come to my program and I think Kurt feels the same way, you're participating in the program. The observation is kind of not... That's not part of this gig. You have to come in with an authentic sense of self and there's something that happens in that sharing that people walk away and they're going to be your advocates for life after they experience that. Well, Kurt, what's getting results? What's working for you out there? Human beings need to try it. Less mental illness is a part of the situation when you're the Unabomber living in the mountains on Tana. So you have to factor in that by and large human beings need to try it. So I play on that because I'm creating a try. Human beings in order to change, to transform, I apply all human beings, not just incarcerated human beings, and I apply it uniquely to myself because I'm not there to fix anybody. I'm there to fix me. I don't have any advice. So the moment that someone presents a situation and someone says, well, I can solve that problem. No, you can't. You're going to give them advice. No advice here, please, because we're here to fix us. So reflection is essential. You have to understand where you came from. You have to understand all the circumstances around where you came from. You have to be able to really dig into that and in particular cases with incarcerated population, there's so much trauma that's involved in that. But you cannot fix the trauma in yourself until you have language to speak to. It's the only way it heals. You can give it medication, just therapy, give them the capacity to go back and look at the horrors from whence they came to be able to understand that they're simply a mirror of where they came from. So they're totally innocent. They are just reflecting where they came from authentically. They're doing it authentically. So when transformation happens, when you realize there's something different and there's another possibility, another place to be, another human being to be, you have to go back and you have to reflect. Theater naturally does that because the acting techniques are all there. You have to fill in all the blanks. Either you find yourself in the character, in the biography of the character. When you can't find yourself in the biography, you use your dramatic imagination. That's how you get there. Using theater and acting is essential because when you help them with the tools to reflect upon the character that they're playing, you don't have to say anything about, well, why don't you use those tools on yourself? It just happens. It's a mirror. The last thing that you need is story. We are narrative creatures. It goes back to the trauma until you can speak your language to your trauma in order to share your story. Healing can't happen. And the beautiful thing that happens in the circle is as I'm telling my story, only two things happen. One, I go, you too. Or I go, I don't have your experience. I'm a rural agrarian farm kid. I wasn't grown up in the city. I didn't have violence in my home. Your story breaks my heart. We have empathy. So that's applied in every aspect, working with the prisoners, attempting to work with the prison administration, attempting to work with funders, board members. It's the same technique. I don't apply any different technique when I'm directing professionally. In fact, the work that I've done in prisons has informed me as an artist. It has informed me as a director, as an actor. It has informed me most importantly as a human being. So it's about that authenticity. And being authentic with whoever you're with, that's what moves me. I'm no different now with you than I am in any other situation, by the way, with my family. I'm no different. I'm here. My heart is open. I'm not judging. I'm just here to try to make me better. I just wanted to take, you know, go on out here. Does anybody have any questions for any of the panelists that they've heard or anything that they said or any questions in general that we'd like to go ahead? Thank you all so much for being here today. I've got some personal experience, volunteering in the Dallas County Jail, a program called Resilana. And we work with women who are incarcerated there. We offer programs that are everything from acting in theater to visual art to, you know, a variety of things, culture and making art. And one of our success stories had to do with working with the administration. And there's a really big difference between working in a county jail and working in a state prison, right? And there's a really big difference in having someone who is an officer who's in charge of the particular pod and who understands. So I'd like to hear some of your worst horror stories and your best success stories in terms of the logistics of working with the people that you're working with. And some advice about everything from, you know, when you're working in a county jail and people are being admitted and they're being released all hours of the day and night. And in our case, working with women, it would be forever threatening, when I can imagine it was difficult to be able to kind of show up. And so, everything from that to having the judges appreciate and understand the work so that the judges can advocate for that work as part of a plan to accelerate someone's release or to help them kind of participate in their entry. So I would just like to hear some of those kind of practical, you know, stories that you have about working with the administration and working with the logistics so that works. Wow, yeah. I mean, I've had good and bad, definitely. I think that working with prison administrations about 55% of the case it feels like because it's so inconsistent it feels like the classes and everything else the offerings are the most consistent. I remember in particular, so one of the groups that's part of Shakespeare Notre Dame is called Actors from the Lemon Stage and it's a five person British troop that generally tours to universities all over the country. All universities. Down right below you. Oh, nice, nice. And so I've started a template where they premiere each show at my prison, at Westville Correctional Center. And I have buy-in at the very top with the warden, the superintendent of the prison but it comes down a lot of times to the shift captain. And so you'll be coming in and you're bringing a show in and you're bringing units together which rarely have ever happened and then suddenly there's no count letter and we're talking about what count letter you know and then we're sitting there for two hours waiting for them to sort it out and then you end up getting to do a 30 minute abridged version of the plagues they got to be back for chow or for count or whatever you know. So there are those things internally those hiccups that happen all the time but at the same time I was able last year, about this time last year I had a reporter from the South Bend Tribune and a videographer that were like you really want to do a piece about your program and I told them like if you're coming you're in the class I don't want you just sitting off the side taking notes or whatever. So they came to my class for like three months and then wrote this beautiful beautiful piece with like a seven minute video like months later it took them about three months to put all this stuff together that came out and the doors that opened to me at that prison just because I got in good press and there just been a huge expose about the private healthcare provider at the prison and people that were dying you know people that were almost dying from an abscess too because they weren't getting the right healthcare so here's this story that completely changed the community's perception about what the prison was doing and that really I have no problem I just walk in and out now and people the administrative side they celebrate the fact that I'm there because I come in with an authentic heart you know no agenda I understand that if anything has to shift in a day it's going to be me and I just get up against the wall and say you know go do what you gotta do and that adaptability I think buys me a lot of goodwill I have a quick question for Alan in the five years or so that you were involved in our program did you notice any change in the overall culture of the prison with the other inmates or the officers? I think more with because my social group altered so I noticed that more but I think some of the recognition from some of the prison officials that started to see that the program was making positive changes in certain people especially me and so a quick story regarding that Captain Pedro is a captain that had recently approved me to go back into the prison to see a recent production out there and I knew him 15 years ago when I was a little jerk one in the hole and calling him names and we had gone back and forth for years and I think the transformation he saw in me over that time period kind of altered his perception of me and some other people that I know were also had were also going down a poor path they got involved in this program and then they kind of started shifting their life around and the officials seeing that I think they give more leeway to the program I know this our first production we didn't have a lot of props or clothing or anything like that I think we had some doublets and then we had our prison jeans and whatever else on and by the next time I think there's a change in administration we didn't get to do a play the next year but the following year we got to do one and there was just I mean we got full full attire a lot more props were approved and then as the program continued what we're seeing now is they're now making props in the stage stuff in the prison for the productions and they're allowing more stuff in there so you can certainly see the shift in the administrations and in the guards perception of the program and what it's doing what was it what was it like moving from one social set into another social set and not doing the things that you were doing before was there any resistance met with that how did you have the strength to make that well I was switching from I hang out with a lot of the gangs there and I think when I started pulling away from them they started feeling a sense of like I betrayed them or something which is common in the gang when the guy's getting out of that lifestyle all his buddies were you going we've been here we break bread together we hang out together and then now you're leaving and that betrayal translates in a lot of times in violence or negativity because that's what they know that's the lifestyle so the trash talk and the mudsling where oh that guy's horrible he's a bad guy whatever and I just had to keep pulling away from it and it was it was difficult because it sometimes brought violence to me from that from that quarter and but I knew I still knew I had to had to trudge on and get away from that because that's all I was ever going to see if not so the transition was shaky for me because of what I had mired myself in before but getting once that transition was made and years pass and people forget things and people get moved around and things change they forget and then it's fine how long did that process take? about almost two years two years it was about a the last time that they brought any kind of violence to me was about a year after I started pulling away from them and then over that period there was just some people talking smack and talking trash behind my back and stuff and they wouldn't say anything in my face anymore and then it just stopped altogether so yes well I'm actually responding to something before the question that was in here and it was about how the prison and it's for everyone as well so I just finished doing a show that was written by two and now it's actually starting to move to be outside as well but we found that at the same time that the administration at times were happy about what was happening how the Jews were being made there were people in the prison who were necessarily happy about guards who in fact one of the women who wrote one of the pieces while we were rehearsing found ourselves in solitary for about three weeks the empowering that doing this is giving some of the women who are participating in it empowers them maybe to be a little bit more vocal a little bit different than they've been in fact there were some backlash and I was just wondering if anybody else has experienced that and how to navigate that so I don't get them in trouble is that actually right the whole idea of doing Shakespeare plays in prison is really I mean mid-summer night stream you know that's not really prison culture that's not for the inmates for the guards it's not it's way outside of their idea of what the place that they are so so naturally a lot of people are going to have difficulty with this thing that is so un-prison like but everybody has inside them something that wants is that where again the officers all the people who are serving all those guys who are left back behind in the gang they're waiting for their invitation to come along someday I think I know exactly what you're saying I don't think it's a bad thing she spent three weeks in solitary I don't think that's a bad thing it's a sling and an error that we all must bear and her ability then to reflect on why she spent three weeks in solitary is where her learning occurs right it's always about cautioning where are you the question is always where are you and who are you with all the time she needs to figure out what it is that she did and it may have been an injustice that was perpetrated upon her it happens all the time injustice happens all the time horrible things have happened I don't get upset about that because there are moments that happen and it's understanding how it happens that keeps you away from the moment we're occurring and that's life so the sling and error that they have to deal with in prison is just a preparation for the bigger sling and error that they're going to hit when they hit the street it just gets big so the reality is again I'm there to fix me I'm working on me and that's how the circle functions so she's working on her you didn't get her in the trouble of responsibility that's not you but you learned something from that and now you question was I responsible how do I play into this so that's your story and you're moving along and gathering more experience and becoming a bigger human being which makes you a better facilitator which makes you a better artist and I think it's kind of what Delia was saying about having love for everyone so the stuff we sometimes initially have a reaction of can't they just give us the space to do our work can't they just participate we want them to be in the circle with us and there's a lot of resistance to that because of their own stuff that they're working on so for me it's about finding empathy for them and where they're at as well and reminding myself that it's not something I may be able to fix but the invitation is there for them to be seen as well and we found that if we actually check in with them and give them permission to share with us what they're seeing and learning about the young people then they feel like oh I'm being seen in her too if we come in with our frustration front and center with the restrictions that get thrown at us and the behaviors that sometimes come out of nowhere that we don't anticipate from the staff and the administration we have no idea about the layers of things that are happening when we're not there we're there for a short amount of time and it's so complex it's so complex so for me that level of compassion I have to check myself over and over and over to say it's the compassion for this whole community here that's my concentration too on the ensemble and there are individual obligations to the ensemble so a lot of the students that I'm working with this is the highlight of the week I mean I come in on Friday night I try to bring a Friday night experience I'm bringing beer in or anything like that but I try to bring a celebratory experience around Shakespeare, around the theater and this becomes the highlight of their week a lot of times they tell me that time and time again and so they're very protective of the guys in the ensemble and they live in a strict program called PLUS a purposeful living united through service which it's a merit based program but they're all five years or less before re-entry so they can be in the shower during count and get kicked out of that that unit you know it's kind of draconian so they look out for each other a little bit more so that's my biggest triumph in this work I think is their connection to one another their re-emergence of self over this process because I teach in pretty much semesters that's kind of the structure that was forced upon me that this guy's going to help me actually erase I hope but at the end of that six months the communication, the openness the authenticity that they have with the circle with each other with Shakespeare honestly is mind blowing and so if you take the lesson of the ensemble I think into your circle and what's our contract with one another that might help people keep it in check when the other six and a half days that we're not in a facility because there are times I come in they're just down like this we lost seven people out of the unit for no reason basically just cleaned house and then I lost two of my guys the verge of just you know and I've never seen them again but that's just part of the work I want to go on to the back I'm just so moved by this panel I'm like tearing up I'm appreciative of this work that you're doing because I know that many of those bodies that are incarcerated are black and brown so thank you for that sorry I feel polisily we'll all be joining you I um I was really uh very interested in what Scott you had to say because I work at Yale University and I've been given the opportunity to expand what Yale Repertory Theater is doing as far as community engagement and this work has definitely been missing from my practice as an artist and an activist I think I'm afraid of it quite frankly the idea of going into a prison building frankly scares the shit out of me and so I'm just wondering as you kind of made the transition into this work what were some of the first steps you took toward it what were some of the fears you had were there any misconceptions you had about it that were kind of you know shattered as you started to really get into the work are there any reasons why someone should not do this work I mean you said that you need more people participating but what are the signs maybe that you see in your organization the resources that you have that you would suggest like maybe not this particular uh work so the first thing I did is like I talked to some really smart people you know developed a network and uh other reasons the Shakespeare and prisons conference happened because prisoners and practitioners didn't have a place to come together we were all kind of siloed and doing the same thing in a million different ways so that's the first step come join that circle and then for me there was a there was a certain commitment there was a certain calling within that that I knew that if I was going to be part of this solution I was going way outside my comfort zone this was my own special gift that I could give to the world and it was scary as hell it really was and I started by first off finding my finding a network finding those who could help me put puzzle pieces together in the beginning and then from that starting to bring performances and and ad hoc workshops as and where they were available with some of the companies that I managed and making this a priority and going back to my school and saying this is what we did with these resources was this a bad thing people like couldn't say nothing and then I started to develop my own program week by week by week but it was getting to know the apparatus of that correctional facility um because if I had just said like here's the other thing like there's so much religion going on in my facility and it's not good religion it's fundamentalist rubbing people's noses in it and I come in and I'm just like it's changed us in you I'm not going to bring God into this equation so I found my own unique way to present my works that would empower the guys and not make them feel like they were judged and victimized as they constantly were and then I just constantly were fine you know I step back after every class and I'm like what did I do right what did I do wrong so that self-reflection is really essential part of this and am I okay am I not okay and I see people that going and start programs that they get too close and that's dangerous there has to be a professional boundary you can love these guys there's compassion for these girls these women but you have to find a place that keeps the program safe I think the there are as many models of this work as there are individuals doing this work the reason that we created the Shakespeare Prison Network is to be a resource to each other but I think more important it is to do conferences like this to say we're here to help because the work is so big it's endless there's a place for everybody and that's if you're called to do this work I feel I can feel your heart and there are those that have gone before you who will give you anything you want and everything the generosity is enormous and you will find your way in and when you find your way in you will then be doing the authentic work that you are called to do and who you are and how you want to do that there is no one way to do that but there are a lot of people that have a lot of experience with dealing with corrections problems I've had in 22 years have never been with the prisoners they've always been with the administration always so if you don't take the administration into account if you're not dealing with the administration on a daily basis the same way that you're working with those prisoners you're going to get you're gone and there's always a way to find your and less my guys get so angry and the women the jubis think I'm pretty cool so we're here that's why we did this panel this panel is to come and say there's going to be 25 people here at TCG that want to know about this work and who are also doing this work and that's how we teach each other that's what we're about is to say there's a resource if you're called we can help 1-800 I just want to say a quick thing about demystifying too because I feel like society has put a label on prison and in removing those bodies from our society in a place that's locked and I hear you on the fear part of it and I think any human being has that because we've been conditioned to have that and at the same time we're talking about human beings these are human beings and we all every one of us have to make choices every day that are good or bad or neutral or whatever and so I think in the end there's a place around demystifying and thinking that it is a place that's certainly special work I don't mean to say that what we do is not ultra important what we're working with human beings and I think that's where the heart center needs to remain I may have been lucky because my dad was a prison chaplain so I had a little bit of insight ahead of time but yeah just that human to human thing that I think that Kurt is eloquently as usual talking about I want to say something quick too little so if I could like I didn't know before I began what I was getting in for and the big surprise is I keep saying this word I'm sorry apologies is love man like bam I'm going to prison and I don't that's the least afraid I am in that week is when I'm in there you know and Alan and I a week ago today we're at two rivers watching the Tempest together and after the place over the room just explodes with laughter and volunteers and hugs and love so much love it knocks you down it's so beautiful and I didn't know that that would happen but I thought let's put on a play and and I don't know if that would be other people's experience or what the like Kurt's saying all the programs are different I don't know what other people will find but one thing that you might find is is some is like some giant love blast that you didn't know was coming and just sorry to speak to that point but I think it's important also to remember for anyone thinking about volunteering or going into a prison that has some of those fears is to remember that you're bringing acceptance and compassion into a place where it's completely void of that and when you bring that in you'll get it back a hundred Do you still have a question so you can't help it Well I was touched by what this woman from the Paul said about the the power of this work to transform people inwardly and I mean that's what you were speaking to that's why that woman found herself in isolation for three weeks she discovered something inside of herself and that's what this work does and so I was curious about how much check it has done and because I think that's what sounds like that's what needs to happen to keep up with the transformation that's happening with people but I was at that performance that Johnny and Alan were just describing and it was my first time in the prison I was scared to go and so I'm coming at this from a very different perspective it was something very new to me having done been an artistic director at the theater that was playwright centric so this is still very new to me and walking out of that performance it was the tempest and I was struck by how disorienting it is being inside because of the fluorescent lighting and I looked at the clock on my way out and it was nine o'clock at night and it could have been noon it's like the Las Vegas experience you just have no sense of time outside of that building into the most glorious sunset I had seen in decades there had been a tempest there was lightning in the sky there had been thunder and rain and I was just really knocked out by the irony of that experience and my first thought was those men have no idea what was happening outside they won't because there's no windows whatever it all happened in here and in here and so I've just been really thinking about that a lot the power of the imagination and what this work does I would posit that that sunset wasn't trying to be a sunset it just was and that it was you who saw the sunset in a different way because you had been transformed you recognized the beauty of it because of the experience that you had but that sunset was as beautiful as every sunset that's ever existed it's just in how you look at it how do you see the world and that's you we're working on and you being able to tell that story you find ourselves in your story and that's how it happens I'm always constantly aware when I step through that solid work it's differencing the pressure and the air it's impossible but it smells different it's brighter and all you've done has gone through one little gait but it is it makes you grateful for the freedom that you have and I'm really conscious of it because a lot of us take it for granted our ability to move through this world yes sir I just have a data back to the data question they want data so that we can get in the door I'm moved by testimony and relationships and that convinces me but that's not what they want is there a network yet where we can somehow fund, participate, gather, commission access it and I'm not even sure how much it plays nationally because I know in Minneapolis 10,000 things there Hengman County, Ramsey County they don't care about each other we can tell Ramsey County this is going great over here and Hengman County goes so loud I don't care so in terms of data how vocal does that data have to be in order to be relevant to them do they look at something and no interest in less ability but I'm gathering that they want to get to very quick for everybody in the room California got their arts and prison program money from the legislature how could they possibly do that they must have put together a very convincing case check with their what their data is probably the strongest in this country so one of the goals of the Shakespeare prison network was to connect with academics and with researchers that would be interested in long term studies so that's kind of at a nation stage right now but that's definitely one of the things that all of us as an international cohort have been clamoring for our long term statistics about recidivism this or that or statewide statistics because funding is a problem we're not necessarily in Indiana going to find funding through our state arts council but a private foundation that it speaks to some goal that they have of engagement in the community if I had a two pager that I could just slip to them that might be the difference between a nay or $150,000 for five years and you were finding more a barrier with the institution than with the funding it's the change in leadership and they're answering to someone else and asking for proof we're now linking all of our activities to recidivism and you can tell me and that's true and that's actually the best data but that's not what they're looking I think what you have to do is find the question behind the question and tell me what you want it's listening deeply into that tell me what you want what kind of data do you and asking the next question because it's only through questioning that you lead someone to their own epiphany it's always through questioning and knowing who you're talking to when I talk to legislators I use one statistic over a 22 year period it's almost a hundred prisoners on the street we have a 6.1% recidivism and it's accurate we don't lie like government does because in the state of Kentucky if you've been out for two years and commit a crime and come back to prison it's not recidivism, it's a new crime if you're in Michigan, it's three years they do smoke and mirrors I just tell the truth which means if a guy's been out for 20 years and he's convicted and comes back I'm going to count it because it's just easier to tell the truth so when I'm talking to legislators at 6.1 we track that our sentence if I'm talking to a warden if I'm talking to a captain they don't give a shit about pardon the French recidivism, right? because that's their job they want to keep their job what they do care about is violence on the earth so I only give one statistic in prison where I have worked after two years of working there we reduced 50 to 60 violent acts per month to below double digits that's what they care about we went below double digits because they want a safe place officers want a safe place prisoners want a safe place so it's knowing what it is that they want and asking a question that's behind the question it'll get you there and I don't provide the answer easily and I don't leap to the answer until I hear recidivism for legislators and violence for officers on the earth and it's an ever changing environment and isn't that beautiful because that's where life is the guys that are men and women that are coming out of prison they're going to figure out who they are because of the stuff that comes out of how difficult it to be on the street that's what we have to prepare ourselves for surviving on the street and so asking the guys what do you need what tools do you need that's the way my struggles function our struggles function it's all about what's the question so we have a question we have a pedagogy our success is based on things that I know that's been based on failure because then I have to figure out why I fail and how I cannot fail again but knowing I'm going to fail again so that's for me a success my success for me is what's my next failure I'm going to, yes Hi, my name is Ines it's very important and I want to thank you so much for everyone for being here I'm going to start I'm a theatre director I'm going to start volunteering right now July and I'm very excited about it for many reasons and especially for what you say and everyone said you said something that you said that we have to be split working with the very young women 18 to 21 so they're in the research library so I know that some days I may have 2, 3 another day I may have 10 so I'm still figuring out what we're going to do together but I'm nervous about the fact that since my own experience I never talked before my own experience is a theatre director that's the way I know how to be in the room to be actors so how I'm going to adapt to people that are not actors first and second that are locked down in these institutions so it's very different than working with actors and how I'm going to manage with my big ego and try because I have plans and I want to do business with that and I'm super excited we're going to make a film we're going to devise I'm sure I'm going to find so many barriers so this is great all that you're talking about because it's also the idealizing that's the great word because I feel that I'm way too much like yes I'm going to and so my question would be like how how to navigate how can you advise me to navigate those barriers and especially the ones that I'm more concerned about are the body language the career things so what because working with actors it's a lot of like yes get together, hold your hands lie on the floor which I know that for inmates you cannot ask them to be lying on the floor because if they're women they can remind them you know, of oppression and things that so all that rules that I kind of starting to know because I'm talking with people that aren't there but I still don't know them very well so I want to have all the freedom that I can to be with them at the same time and know that there's a lot of things that I have to be careful and yes so I would like semi-plastic sorry good luck but you just have to start and I'd say for me and I'm sure we can all talk about this if Kurt can even remember from the very beginning of his tenure in this work but it's going to change so much and I think it's about saying yes to them rather than expecting them to say yes to you right so as a director, as a theatre professional assuming that you have anything to offer these people who are trying to figure out how to survive is a little ridiculous so if we can flip it around and think like I have just a toolkit here that I offer in this space decide together what I mean Kurt talks about the circle I'm sure that you can get more specific and what's your circle going to look like what are the agreements that you can make with this group together so everyone's invested and then know when you need to say yes to them so just a quick example a colleague of mine was running a residency at a girls facility and there was a young woman who was completely shut down she hated the whole experience she kept coming so that was something but she hated the whole experience of the King Lear project and they were writing and we took the script that they were writing and mashed it up into King Lear slash devised piece with their own words and she wrote in her journal she wrote, fuck King Lear I fucking hate Shakespeare I fucking hate this fuck you and my colleague was like, you know what I think we should put that at the end of the piece and she was like what, you know totally taken off guard because someone had taken what she was trying to do to really just express herself I think but in that setting in another context would have been discipline and we were like, yeah, right on I can't, I hear ya let's get to that and so it was so amazing sitting in the audience and watching their performance super strong and super incredible and then at the end she didn't read her own writing someone else wrote it for her but to like with full conviction stand up at the end and say fuck this I fucking hate King Lear fuck Shakespeare it was incredible it was like the room was just we were crying, we were laughing it was amazing and so I think to me that is right there is like how do I say yes and recognize that resistance just wants to be heard in the same way that everything else does to do to maybe assist the journey ask not what you can do for the circle ask for the circle you are totally prepared, you've got arsenal of stuff until it's called you just go in as a human being with an open heart and offer non judgment and unconditional love like Johnny says and that's how it all begins because that's all we want so I'm not there to teach them anything I'm there to listen I'm there to say to myself what can this circle teach me and every circle is there so you're ready you're just going to be a human being and find that right moment that spark and idea will come but the number one thing is to be a human being and they'll flock to you like moths that's what they want yeah wield that authority wisely because it's thrust in their face every moment and so when you come in and as opposed to boarding above these guys and you come in and you say let's hold hands like what and then the next time you come in and you say let's hold hands now we're going to close our eyes and then the next time you come in you're like alright let's do some breathing let's do let's do you know son's augmentation let's touch our toes these things that are so incredibly laden with vulnerability and the guys will be so resistant to it first but you just take it at the pace of the circle you know and you put your agenda aside and you have a knowledge base, you have a knowledge bank don't think that at the end of the first time you go in there's going to be this big glossy production there may not be but that doesn't mean you didn't succeed that doesn't mean that you haven't changed lives you know just getting people to connect through the 5 feet of concrete that they have built around themselves over 1, 2, 5, 20, 30 years to get them to to reach out and to touch to to lift an energy ball off the ground that's a huge success Sara so we have one time for one last question I'm going to stand up so you can see thank you for sharing all your experience I really appreciate it I have a what if it's not Shakespeare question heresy heresy I work in communities telling their own stories but I've never worked in an incarceration setting and I think we'll be doing that in the future so I know that we won't be doing Shakespeare I think and I'm curious maybe for Mara and Alan and for everyone would the reception in the powers that be be different if you went in and said we're going to be working with folks telling their own stories versus we're doing Shakespeare because Shakespeare always has that automatic this is real art seal of approval and you've spoken about working interweaving personal stories into the Shakespeare work and if there's a different experience I think everyone that sounds like in your work is just expressing their own stories it's just what the final outcome may be and then for Alan specifically as someone who participated in this program would you have been more or less interested if you had heard this is a theater workshop versus you'll be doing Shakespeare versus you'll be telling your own story as a kind of a true point well I think I was looking for something something positive like I mentioned earlier when you enter into that space with acceptance and compassion then you receive that back and I think that's what I was looking for that was lacking in my life and I think whatever the outlet is whether it's sharing our stories whether it's Shakespeare whether it's some other whatever is going to be beneficial so whatever the platform is just approaching it with that with that acceptance and compassion and letting them into that will be successful no matter what I'm grappling with how to respond because I feel like well first of all there's just a thing around confidentiality and safety so I don't know how it differs in adult facilities because I don't work with them but for young people we actually are not we're not allowed to identify that we're working with period and then there is a lot more oversight when we're drifting into the territory getting at their own stories I think in terms of buy-in not from the participants but from the staff and administration there's something safer about Shakespeare although I think that can apply to any text at all and we haven't just in Shakespeare we did one time Jesus taught the A train we used text from that, scenes from that as I mentioned we're exploring more historical stuff so I think the text can be generated for me it's just being really clear with those that you're working with where the levels of safety are so both in the participant level and on the administration level some people wanted to share their stories and some people just don't and I think I wouldn't want to be in a situation where we're enforcing anything one thing that we do is we have them right but then we also give them permission to determine what to share so we go through a process where they're helping us call and they tell each other they say that needs to be in our script right? you need to make sure that that's in our script and then we give them the choice of whether or not they want to read their own story or not we never tell the audience who and who this was so they are here in Snippets but not their own so I think you have to first of all figure out what are the rules in the particular facility or the population that you're working with and then I think it matters where the story is told we did one time have a young person who was working with us in community and out of school programs we were doing a mashup on love in general and using different Shakespeare plays as a platform and one of the prompts that we were asking was what would you do for love and her crime was sorry her crime was that she had actually killed someone out of love who was a kind of passion and she decided to tell that story and she wrote the story and we didn't want to be in it but her younger cousin was in a program with her at the time and this obstacle program with her and her cousin played her and there was something for her that was I think given the platform of love that allowed her to take that step and we talked about it for a long time the staff like is this okay? we had to check with DUIS like is this okay and keep them very much in the loop and it ended up being an incredible experience for everyone and she was cool with it but she had reached a point where she was ready to do that and we were at the container that could hold that for her but that I feel like was a very unusual special thing and she had been working with us for a number of years so I don't know if that gives you enough of a response but just caution you didn't think about it as being therapy oh yeah I mean I have worked with a lot of populations these kind of best practices and ethics around telling your own story just not in the incarceration setting so I mean those questions I work with all the time in terms of survival and sexual abuse and other things I was just curious in terms of the in the incarceration setting with the officials are you more or less likely to get permission to do the program from the institutions in that question of like Shakespeare being considered real art versus just telling your own story I'm just going to say you want to teach them it can be done, people do device theater in prison we work with Playwright, well Playwright's projects works in the same facility that we work in and they go and they teach playwriting courses and you act those out so that's a form of device work right there I wish we had a couple of people that did not do Shakespeare work but they cancelled out last minute so I'm sorry but they would be able to help navigate that as well did we have a sign-in sheet no I took it as a dance people were going to stand in if we can I'd like to see if people are interested please sign up if you have something we're going to have a conference next year on practitioners in San Diego so if you all want to be involved in that and find out more information sign up and we'll be getting you out some information around that it'll be next March March 23rd and that's for not because it's called the Shakespeare in prison conference but to be clear it's for all types of prison practitioners yes thank you if anybody wants to see Minneapolis in December we're not having a conference but 10,000 banks is doing a gathering and I'm just trying to gather some folks tell a way where folks have been starting to do these things so we can sit in the same room for a few days and eat and drink and share stories this kind of stuff because there's still so much overlap and everybody's doing their own thing, their own version there's so much to be gained and we don't go in and create we just don't perform but there's still so much that I'm hearing that it's making so much sense and going which is just fantastic there's some flyers there alright great thank you guys