The Proscenium Cage: Critical Case Studies in U.S. Prison Theatr ...

For a while, the spectacle became something of a sizzling tourist attraction, leading some to dub it “the pornography of the nineteenth century.” The familiar lockstep is another example of the theatricality of incarceration. The inmates would line up in tight formation, their arms folded snugly across their diaphragms, their heads turned to the right, and the entire string of men would move in a “curious combination of march and shuffle, the march aiming to impose discipline, the shuffle trying to make certain that the men did not become too prideful.”³ The blatantly artificial gait was designed as much for the spectacle of regimented discipline as for forcing absolute conformity onto the convicts (a fact testified to by the sundry Hollywood prison pictures that capitalized on the lockstep’s visual sensationalism). It could even be argued that the prison-issue khakis, and their antecedents, the black-and-white striped uniforms, are all costumes for the benefit of easily identifying level of custody, separating the “trusties“ from the average inmates, and thereby distinguishing the inmate’s role. This “costume” also became an iconic symbol of the prisoner for the larger society, creating a quintessential dramatic character indelibly stamped on the public’s imagination. Michel Foucault, in his seminal book Discipline and Punish, makes an intriguing (if unabashedly biased) argument for penal practices as being deliberately designed to provide a rather perverse form of voyeuristic entertainment.

The spectrum of more specifically theatre-related activity found in corrections is wide and diverse. The rarest are bands of convicts who take it upon themselves to select, cast, rehearse, design, and mount a theatrical production without any outside stimulus or help. Troupes that present plays to an audience of inmates, either on a regular basis or as a single benefit performance, are slightly more common, and more often than not also involve some flirtation with teaching basic acting workshops to the inmates. Drama therapists using theatrical and metatheatrical techniques such as improvisational role-playing or acting games for personal psychiatric therapy also pepper the country’s institutions.