The Power of the Arts

A moving story in the New York Times on the staging of King Lear by inmates of a Wisconsin prison.

Would that these men had a fine arts program when they were young students.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/29/national/29lear.html?

In One Prison, Murder, Betrayal and High Prose
By JODI WILGOREN
Published: April 29, 2005

STURTEVANT, Wis., April 27 - Plastic Toys "R" Us swords were nixed for fear the guards might misconstrue them as real weapons. Gloucester's pouch was filled with metal washers, rather than pennies, because money is barred inside the barbed wire.

The two-and-a-half-hour production of Shakespeare's "King Lear" ran without intermission so that the audience of 100 inmates would not be idle in a big room. And, shortly after their curtain call on Tuesday night to a standing ovation, the actors lined up again, this time against the gymnasium wall, for one of the six daily head counts here at the Racine Correctional Institution.

"It's an opportunity for us to see something in ourselves that others don't see," Megale Taylor said of the play, adding that his role as the Fool had shown him "how much of a fool I've been in my life."

"I've always been an actor," said Mr. Taylor, who is 35 and serving five years for cocaine possession and battery. "We always have on our masks - life is a stage, really."

Here, there was no actual stage - just a set made of blue cloths draped over chin-up bars - for this week's performances of the first full play ever put on at this medium-security prison and one of a handful of Shakespearean works produced behind bars nationwide.

For prison officials, the nine-month Shakespeare Project was a rare opportunity to provide post-secondary education in a budget-crunched system that emphasizes remedial reading. For the director, Jonathan G. Shailor, a professor of communication at the nearby University of Wisconsin-Parkside, it was an experiment in the theater of empowerment....

Kenneth Spears, 52, who killed a woman and a 5-year-old girl with his car, already has 18 years inside, with "34 months, 23 days and a wake-up" left to go. But when a guard informed him last week that he was headed to a minimum-security facility, Mr. Spears asked if the move could wait until after the show.

"I said, 'Please don't let them transfer me,' " recalled Mr. Spears, adding that only the play has enabled him to overcome his rage and grief since his conviction. "My legacy is not going to be a crazy Vietnam veteran or a killer of women and children or a convict. My legacy is what I do with this from now on."

Posted by at April 29, 2005 8:59 AM
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