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

Finally, there are those outfits that produce theatre for the incarcerated, engaging professional directors to mount a show with a cast made up either entirely or partially of inmates. These fall into two significant subcategories: first, troupes that produce plays from the professional theatre (including several dedicated to Shakespeare); and second, those companies that create original plays conceived, written, and performed in collaboration between the theatre professionals and the inmates. The number of producing agencies is fairly evenly divided between these two sets, and many of the enterprises are collaterally involved in both forms, alternately producing established plays and original pieces.

This distinction suggests a rather noteworthy curiosity regarding America’s priorities for theatrical expression among inmates. It is interesting to note that with the companies that produce both inmate-written plays and previously produced works, the original shows seem not to have been put forth for public presentation other than to a closed audience of the prison population. (World premieres of Bird of Treachery and other inmate-written plays produced by Theatre for the Forgotten, for example, received very little press attention, while The Advocate, The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet, and Day of Absence were more heavily publicized in the media. Similarly, the original plays developed in the Cell Block Theatre’s Writer’s Unit—the outfit’s playwriting workshop—and produced by the acting company were ignored by reviewers; however, CBT’s production of Golden Boy was covered by several papers.) How much of this can be attributed to the media itself cannot be determined. It could easily be that the prison administration limited outside access to the original pieces, either for lack of censorship control or simply because issuing press releases announcing the show was just more bother than the publicity would have been worth. Whatever the case, the central point here is that the attitude seems to be that the inmates’ voices are relevant only to the inmate community. Only when they are willing to conform to society’s norms by working on an accepted piece of published dramatic literature is there an interest for the public beyond the prison walls.