|
|
This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
It would also be safer for both the at-liberty theatre artists and the participants in general, as the medium-security inmates are less likely to erupt into violence.
In the final analysis, although it may no longer be the single central purpose of the prison system, the rehabilitation ideal is still advocated, and resources are devoted to installing and maintaining such efforts. The theatre programs themselves are never direct implementations of the Department of Correction, but rather are “para-correctional” operations, functioning independently of the administration. As such, it is significant to consider how they fit in with the other programs, both official and other volunteer services, in place at the institutions.
Each of the following chapters is as detailed an examination of three distinct prison-theatre programs as the available evidence permits. Chapter one looks at Theatre for the Forgotten (TFTF): the first and longest running such enterprise in American history and one of the first in the world. Chapter two focuses on the Cell Block Theatre, the most highly publicized company working in the field. Both TFTF and CBT are now defunct. The third chapter is dedicated to Prison Performing Arts, one of the few prison-based theatre troupes operating today. Each of the three companies approached the work from wholly different perspectives and with completely diverse agendas.
Akila Couloumbis and Beverly Rich, the founding executive directors of Theatre for the Forgotten, stridently insisted that their efforts were to provide entertainment for the inmates in the hopes of relieving some of the pent-up frustrations of prison life and its oppressiveness. Ray Gordon, who assumed the artistic directorship of Cell Block Theatre early in its life and brought the company to the forefront of public attention, had a thoroughly different design for his work. Gordon wanted to effect social change, insisting that theatre could simultaneously rehabilitate offenders from their criminal behavior and empower them as full-fledged citizens. The assumption that crime is a by-product of socioeconomic deprivation and the prejudiced oppression of the ruling classes fueled Gordon’s social conscience, leading him to find causal connections between social injustice and individual criminality.