Workshop Beginnings

Jan: Episode Two: Workshop Beginnings.

In this podcast, we intertwine first-person tales of prison theatre workshops across three continents, reflecting on the prison system, theatre, collectivity, and love. The frame is a love story from one of the workshops between Finn, who was incarcerated, and me, Jan, who cofacilitated. 

Finn: Nothing gets allowed in Trenton. Nothing. They had no schools. Nothing. It was the last stop, so, for the seven or eight prisons they got. You don’t go there unless your life is over, okay. If you go into Trenton, your life’s over. Just accept that. And I went in; I’d already accepted that. So, it was just fine. That’s the thing; you gotta go in and just totally embrace it.

Jan: That’s why it’s wild you even ever walked into the drama workshop. Since you felt that way already, why would you even try it?

Finn: Well, your life is never over.

Jan: Okay.

Finn: Even if you think it is, it’s not.

Jan: Whew, good, I want to hear that.

In this episode you’ll hear how the workshops got going. We begin with Terry Kinney and Kathryn Erbe, stepping in as Finn and me, at the very first workshop we did in Trenton.

Younger Jan [Played by Kathryn Erbe]: A guard walked us to “the star,” where multiple corridors meet leading respectively to the cell block, mess hall, infirmary, yard, and education wing. The latter is where the drama workshop took place, in a classroom with surveillance windows along the wall adjacent to the hallway and with the desks pushed to the side. 

I had chosen my clothes with care not because I was a fashion horse—I’ve never been. But as one of the only females that the inmates would encounter, I wanted to reinforce my personhood, not be seen as a potential conquest, at the same time as providing a little spice. I wore a loose shirt, a fitted vest, high-top sneakers, and, like most everyone else, jeans. I had long, unkempt, reddish-brown hair.

Younger Finn [Played by Terry Kinney]: Within five seconds of arriving at the drama workshop in an education classroom, I grab a chair at the back of the room. I sit motionless in fixed terror at the possibility of actually having to stand in front of a collective of judges who, with a simple utterance from my lips, would see deep into my successfully masked cowardliness and judge me with mocking laughter, or, worse yet, spread what they’ve learned about my cowardice to the general population. The thought of getting up in front of people and speaking was terrifying, inducing what psychologist Karen Horney named as a fear worse than death—being found out. 

Younger Jan: About a dozen participants greeted us warmly and introduced themselves. The energy level was high, and people were clearly glad to be there, if for no other reason than as a relief from the boredom of a cell. 

Younger Finn: The other prisoners in the workshop were an interesting lot. They joined for various reasons: to get out of their cells, score points in the rehab game, or become famous actors or writers someday. They hoped for help getting their needs met, by smuggling in drugs, providing sexual favors, helping them escape, or finding a legal path to early release. 

Younger Jan: The range of guys in the workshop brings to mind the sailors of many faiths on the ship Jonah boarded to Ninevah. Like in the Jonah story, they were each following their own god. Some guys wanted the workshop to politicize the general prison population, others were exploring themselves, and still others were out to get whatever they could. Some were doing all three.

Younger Finn: Remaining seated and motionless, thoroughly hidden in the open, I perceive with depth the two characters who arrived with every intention of liberating us through what I viewed as Freudian/Marxist theatre life. Richard, a soft-spoken, always wide-smiling Bertolt Brecht, introduced the workshop with a quote from Brecht himself: “Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it,” at which I shuddered. He was determined to conquer the oppressive world of patriarchal capitalism with a progressive, i.e., Freudian Marxist ideology, embedded in Wilhelm Reich’s sexual liberation principles. 

Jan moved about the room in a free-flowing mime-dance in worn-out black high-top sneakers, black jeans, a pirate-style white shirt encased in a firm-fitting black vest with gold stitching woven throughout in wild patterns. Her long, auburn hair flowed ever-outward like flames, more like a young, enthusiastic anarchist than a staid, suffocating, power-obsessed Marxist. A mix of Janis Joplin, Susan Sontag, and a race car driver, she had willingly entered the worst prison in America on her twenty-first birthday, what would no doubt be for her a dying and being born into an identity distant from all she had previously known about herself.

Younger Jan: And Finn, who moved me from the moment I set eyes on him, appearing so sensitive and tough at the same time. Finn had his own interpretation of everything, which later, when he allowed himself to come out of hiding with me, he shared, including background that illuminated it. He had green eyes, red hair with little fringe bangs like a Benedictine monk, and seriously muscular arms. It was the first time I realized that guys in prison worked out not just because they had time on their hands but also to protect themselves; I hadn’t thought about prisons as dangerous for the people there, only as places where dangerous people were locked away from the general population. Finn looked so fragile that the air around him trembled. How was that possible with those arms? 

Jan: Here’s Kathy and Mama Glo.

Kathy Randels: After leading that first workshop at LCIW for six months, which was supposed to be the end and I was going to go on with my life, one of the participants, Sherral Kahey, said, “You know you can’t leave us, right Kathy?” Right, Ms. Sherral.

Gloria “Mama Glo” Williams: I joined the drama club in the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women after spending from 1985 to 1996 in solitary, maximum security. Sherall Kahey and Mona Rhodes kept telling me about it: “Gloria, you speak so well, you should join drama!” They wouldn’t let up on me. Sherral and Mona were on the board that interviewed people interested in becoming members. I was voted in, and from then on, fell in love with drama.

I am still grateful to Mona and Sherral. I learned so much from them. Sherral was a teacher in the Vo-Tech area. Your diction had to be excellent for her. You had to dot all the i’s, make sure all your t’s were crossed! She was such a powerful and rare breed of woman. You would learn a lot simply by watching and listening to her. She told a unique story of wanting to be a midwife because it ran in her family. Her time was cut short here on Earth from cancer. But her memory lives on through us.

Kathy: I started the LCIW drama club, at the state institution for women in Louisiana, in my mid-twenties. The majority of women in the prison were Black, and there were things that I, as a young white woman, could not provide them. So, a few years into the workshop I reached out to you, Ausettua, yes, because you are Black, but not because I thought being Black meant you automatically knew everything about incarceration! But I had seen your amazing performances all over New Orleans since I was in high school and I had taken some of your West African dance classes in the community. You command every stage, with every movement of your body. You used to spin your head and super-long dreadlocks around so fast it was dizzying just to watch. Call her?! But there I went again. Acting bolder than I felt. Following a spirit that gave me the courage to face giants. And you, giant Ausettua, said “Yes.”

Ausettua Amor Amenkum: I was a little annoyed at the idea that she felt that I could relate to incarcerated women. Was it because I was Black? I had never gone to prison, I didn’t know anybody who had gone to prison, and I felt like I was being stereotyped. I never processed that I was on this trajectory academically with my desire to be a criminal psychologist. In hindsight, my decision to go with Kathy was the beginning of a twenty-year commitment of working with women in prison, completely different from the way I worked with the men at the Louisiana prison of Angola. 

When I entered the LCIW, the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, for the first time, I was met with smiles, and hugs, and shouts of “Hey, sister.” The space felt so familiar. I had entered a room filled with my aunties, sisters, cousins, and mamas. I was honored to meet Gloria, aka “Mama Glo” Williams, Sherral Kahey, Mary Turner, Michelle Allen, Selina Anderson, Demetricy Moore, Consuela Gaines, Ivy Mathis, Rhonda Oliver, and Sandra Starr. I was home, and it was love at first sight. 

Mama Glo: I remember when Ausettua first came in. Kathy told us she was bringing her friend, who taught different types of dancing. Guess what—she stayed because she became addicted to drama and us! Because we are free-spirited people. We are easy to love and show love. We’ve been hurt so much in our lives and have had to suppress so much. When I love somebody, I don’t care what you do to me. Ausettua is a rare breed of woman, because she speaks what she feels and if it hurts your feelings, so what. Sometimes I wish she would not be so blunt. But guess what—you have to meet her and love her, but you cannot change who she is. 

Kathy’s the type of person you meet once in a lifetime. When God made Kathy, He broke the mold. Kathy makes sacrifices for people. She’s in love with people, and that is rare. The world is so hard, people don’t care about anyone. I love Kathy as my daughter, as if I gave birth to her. The most powerful thing that happened between Kathy and me was when she put the cross that she had given her mother, who passed away, around my neck. For somebody to do that they not only respect you, they accept you totally for who you are. I will carry that in my heart until the day I die.

I don’t want Kathy to ever think that what she does is not appreciated and not making an impact ‘cause it is. I pray God keep giving her the strength that she can keep doing this ‘til the day she goes to meet Jesus. I remember when she did the one-woman show about the storm. It was so profound. I was so impressed by her covering that whole stage, playing all those parts. That was one of the things that enticed me to join drama. I was always drawn to it in school. It wasn’t until I was an adult, I was able to learn it. 

Jan: The music you are hearing is by Ausettua’s company, Kumbuka African Drum and Dance Collective.

Saul Hewish: We were all young. 

Jan: Saul Hewish and John Bergman of Geese Theatre, who did workshops and performances together in prisons all over the US and the UK—

Saul: Our energy levels were off the planet, so much so that I remember the guys were always saying that they think we were coked up or something because we had all that energy. Especially in a prison, which is so dull and everyone's moving in slow time.

John Bergman: Almost from the very beginning of our work at Statesville Penitentiary in 1980, I learnt that with the right stimulus, the men could create as quickly as my University of Iowa students. That was a thrill and a knowledge that stayed with me all the years of the work and to this day. I did this exercise with the Statesville men, in a room that was actually for wrestlers. I said to them, “You know, I want you to imagine I’m holding a box up, but I’ve taken the front wall off. What do you see inside that box?” And there was no difference in the speed of creation between the men and my university students, just the incredible differences in what they came up with.

Saul: My overwhelming memory of the early days of Geese here in the UK was just an insane amount of argument. There would be all of this, sort of shouting. I just thought, “it's like being in a band.” Because I'd been in bands and that's what it was like. Just like being in a band—a good description of the hype effect we experienced! I always came out of prison high in some ways—not drugs, just massive amounts of adrenaline. 

John: When we would first start with them, they couldn't tell a story. So, in the first couple of days or so, we’d do a lot of physical stuff, just stretching. What we were doing, I think, was throwing words and ideas and memories at them because prison flattens everything. Then slowly they would get there.

Jan: Here are theatremaker Jess Thorpe and warden George Ferguson in Scotland.

Jess Thorpe: Tell me, George, when we met, what did you think of the idea I was proposing—to make a piece of public theatre with young men incarcerated at Polmont Prison for young offenders?

George Ferguson: Well, our partners from the charity Barnardo’s told me that there was a meeting coming up about a theatre project. Obviously, I didn’t know anything about performing arts. I've got a vast prison background in operations. When I first heard what the plan was, I was thinking to myself, “Oh, dear. This is going to be a ten-month creative project for young people who have got, at best, a limited attention span. Do these performing arts people really know what they are letting themselves in for?” You and Tashi Gore came in and gave your idea. I remember thinking, “This is probably going to be a waste of time.” I never voiced that opinion at the time because I was keen to see what your approach would be, but I was skeptical.

Jess: It was kind of the opposite for me. I was trying really hard to sell you the idea of making a professional piece of theatre in the prison and honestly, I did not know if it would work. I really believe in theatre as a process, and I have lots of experience working with young people and working in prisons, but of course there were lots of things I didn’t know and possible challenges that I thought might come up. It was an ambitious project. We were going to be trying things that are not attempted in prisons very often, like opening up the prison as a venue and inviting a public audience in to see the work as part of a national theatre festival.

I was honestly a bit terrified when we first went into that board room with you, but I was not going to let you see it. I expected resistance and a bit of skepticism. I’m used to that. I had been working with the prison system for fifteen years, and most of my experiences had been with men in suits who thought that I was naïve or idealistic or even that the arts had no place in this type of establishment. I have had to work very hard to develop a language and a set of skills to navigate this initial point of view in order to build what I want to build. I suppose I have learned that in these first meetings I just have to go for it because if there’s any evidence that I'm not completely confident in the idea that I am pitching, we might not even be allowed to try.

George: I can understand that. I think it’s probably because of a culture in the prison service. I’m sure a lot of other partners have experienced similar things. We need to think about the operational impact of any new project—how this is going to work. Can people involved be trusted? How do we know it will work?

What actually altered my thinking in our meeting was that I had just come from another high security establishment where things were quite rigid. When I came to this prison, I just couldn’t believe the facilities available. Polmont is the only prison in Scotland to have a purpose-built performing space. And although I knew they had hosted sharings and events in it before, it seemed as if there was still more we could do with it. So maybe about three quarters of the way through that first meeting I started to think, maybe this could work. We do have the resource here, and maybe I’m underestimating youze as artists to have the skill set to pull off something like this. I started thinking right, okay—let’s try this.

Jan: Here’s Rand Hazou in Auckland, New Zealand.

Rand Hazou: The project Performing Liberation aimed to empower communities with direct experience of incarceration to create and share creative work as part of a transnational dialogue. Informing this project was the need to center the experiences of incarcerated communities themselves so that they are empowered to lead creative explorations without reliance on outside artists or educators. The project aimed to facilitate creative dialogue and exchange between prisoners at Auckland Prison and at San Quentin Prison in San Francisco. While these two communities are geographically, historically, and culturally distant, they are nevertheless connected by global mass incarceration and a carceral logic that disproportionately impacts racial minorities. In the US, Black Americans make up 40 percent of the incarcerated population despite representing only 13 percent of US residents. In New Zealand, Māori constitute more than half the prison population, despite being only 15 percent of the overall population. The over-representation of Māori in corrections has been linked to the ongoing legacy of colonialism. 

Jan: Kevin Bott, who led theatre workshops in prison, and Alexander Anderson, who first participated in and now co-leads workshops with Kevin.

Kevin Bott: I keep going back to 2020 and the argument we had on the phone. I don’t remember every detail, but it’s very much linked in my mind to George Floyd’s death and the protests that followed. To put it succinctly, I think you were telling me to get off your neck and work through my own issues as a white man.

Alex Anderson: For me, it started much earlier. I understand the dynamics of what happened between us better now because, since then, I've been in spaces with other white people, and I experienced the same kind of dynamics in terms of what race brings into those spaces.

I’m involved in some programs for people coming out of prison that are supported, and often led, by groups of good-hearted, wanting-to-help white people from affluent backgrounds. I look at it like Richard Wright writes in Native Son. In that space, the impact that whiteness has on Black people is sort of to create a relationship that oftentimes revolves around subjugation and domination. And oftentimes you and me, I had the feeling of our relationship being one of subjugation and domination. I guess it’s just white maleness in that space. I think it’s something that happens in the American psyche. 

Sometimes when I would step in because you weren’t available, I noticed that people were acting differently towards me than towards you. I would say to myself, “Maybe they just don’t trust me. Maybe they trust Kevin.” But then I would ask myself, “How did they get trust for Kevin and distrust for me?” Because I was always very supportive to others in the space. I hate to use those terms, but it was the difference between “learning from your master” or “learning from your brother.” I think that’s part of it—this history of trauma, of slavery, that automatically impacts that relationship. The history of enslavement and domination by whites in America against Blacks is a process that still happens in those spaces. 

Rand: A central provocation for the project was the question: What does liberation feel like? Despite the constraints of confinement and distance. The idea emerged after I met with members of the Artistic Ensemble at San Quentin Prison in July 2019, a troupe of sixteen diverse men in prison working with five outside members. I brought concern to explore how the experience of incarceration might colonize the self so that the segregation, isolation, and confinement can become internalized and normalized. This provoked a discussion about general notions of liberation and how it might involve resisting or refusing the normalization of behaviors and responses imposed by carcerality. As a result, a member of the ensemble, Antwan “Banks” Williams, supplied this list of questions and creative prompts on the theme of “liberation” that he asked me to share with prisoners at Auckland Prison: 

Tell me, what is liberation?

Does it look like you or I?

Tell me if it is worth what you did?

Tell me if liberation goes by another name?

Does it change, stay the same, live forever, or die in vain?

Tell me, please, tell me.

I want to know if your shackles and chains are visual.

Tell me are they literal, biblical?

Tell me if liberation starts within.

If so, tell me you’ve freed your mind.

Tell me time is a figment; tell me your cell’s dimensions.

Tell me liberation can come from forgiveness.

Tell me liberation is near.

Tell me liberation is here.

Tell me liberation can’t disappear.

Do you find liberation in the faces of people you love?

Does liberation look like movements of silence?

If so, how often are you quiet?

Reggie Daniels: I began the workshop by sharing my experiences with crime and my cycles of addiction. 

Jan: This is Reggie Daniels, who cofacilitated the Auckland workshop.

Reggie: I shared that I was seen as the black sheep by my family. I wanted them to know that I understood what it was like to be written off. I wanted us to be on equal footing. People inside are often expected to bare their souls in front of observers. I led by example: demonstrating vulnerability.

I wanted to ensure that participants did not feel judged for their mistakes and defined solely in terms of their criminality. This reductive and deficit approach underpins the corrections system. I wanted to ensure that participants were seen as whole human beings at least for the duration of the workshops. For us, this approach is informed by an understanding that oppression has done its darkest work when it has become internalized. In attempting to facilitate creativity in carceral spaces, the work of liberatory practice is to resist the internalization of oppression created and reinforced by the carceral system which so often dehumanizes the people that it confines.

Eugena K. Griffin defined internalized oppression as a subordinate group adopting a dominant group’s ideology, resulting in “acceptance that their subordinate status is deserved, natural, and inevitable.” The focus for liberation should not only involve resisting mass incarceration and finding alternatives to punitive approaches to crime but also resisting the internalization of carcerality and the normalization of these processes.

Jan: Finn and me in Trenton.

Younger Jan: We began with warm-ups, some yoga-based, that the guys could do in their cells. We shifted to improvisations with simple structures. “Pair up,” Richard instructed, “and decide who is Person A and who is Person B. Person A enters and sits. Person B enters and stands behind A. Person A exits. Now fill in the story.” People came up with great variations on who these two people were and what was going on between them. One was a loop of constantly reappearing A-persons and B-persons, featuring something surreptitiously passed from one to another.

Moments before the session was about to end, Donald said, “I got something. This takes place on a street corner. In Newark. Yeah.” Little by little people got up and hung out, sang doo-wop under an imagined streetlamp, shot the breeze, looked at the stars. It was a startling sensation, recreating, more vividly than the thing itself, which I could do any day but didn’t and they could not do any day soon. It was November first, 1971—my twenty-first birthday.

Jan: And so, at different times and in different places, we all began. Tune in to episode three for how the workshops, and Finn and my relationship, developed. 

The theme music you are hearing was composed by Sasha Paris-Carter. The musicians are Daniel Knapp on cello, Dionisio Cruz on percussion, Joanna Lu on viola, Mary Knapp on accordion, and Rene Ferrer on bass guitar. The percussion ensemble is Kumbuka African Drum and Dance Collective. “Wade in the Water” featured Kenny Butler on piano and vocalist Haja Worley, who was part of the Trenton State Prison workshop with Finn and me. Dionisio Cruz joined them on percussion for “Hush.” This is Jan, signing off.