Exeter Prison

For the last 3 weeks our applied theatre class has been preparing to do a theater workshop in Exeter Prison.

Our professor, Fiona Macbeth, works often with Exeter Prison.  She works with a woman named Laura who runs educational programs for inmates.  She had asked Fiona and her students to come up with a workshop that revolved around the themes of honesty and loyalty within the family.  

We had created a scene earlier in our class that we thought would fit well into this workshop.  To start off the process we divided into pairs and for one minute each talked about an issue that is important to use.  We would then have to present the other person's issue to the group as them.  For example the issue that I talked about was the bullying of LGBT teens and how the suicide rate has increased exponentially.  Fiona (to whom I had related my issue to) would then present to the group as follows, "Hello my name is Amy and an issue that I find important is..etc"  The point is to be able to take on another persons views and express them as if they were your own.  

We created a scene that stemmed out of the issue of teen pregnancy.  We wanted to have our main character a person who is stuck between a rock and a hard place in the context of family loyalty and honesty.  We came up with the story of Patti.  A middle aged woman in conflict between her twin sister whose views on abortion differ from hers and her niece who at 16 has become pregnant asking Patti to not tell her mother and help her get an abortion.  We examined each character and the possible solutions to Patti's dilemma.   We staged it so that the first scene was frozen images of the 3 women in family moments.  Patti then delivered a monologue about herself and her relationship with her sister Angela.  During three points in Patti's Monologue Sophie (the niece and my character) had mini monologues to give some background on her character and her relationships with her mother and aunt.  The next scene was that of Sophie confessing to Patti about her pregnancy and her desire for an abortion.  She makes Patti promise not to tell Angela even though Patti is very uncomfortable about lying to her sister.  The next scene is Angela telling Patti that Sophie has been acting strangely and then demanding that if Patti knows anything that she has to tell her.  

We spent 3 weeks refining this scene and organizing what we would do within the workshop.  We decided that for the first half of the morning we would play theatre games to get to know each other and  do an overall warm up.  After that we presented our scene that we had created and then afterwards gave the inmates a chance to hot seat us as characters and talk about possible solutions to the proposed dilemma.  Then in the afternoon we would repeat our process of creating that scene with the inmates to create their own scenes which would be performed at the end of the day.

Before we knew it the day had arrived.  It was a clear yet cold morning in Exeter as we walked to the prison.  The prison was built in 1850 and is a remand prison for men.   It accepts all male adults and young offenders from the courts of Devon, Cornwall, and West Somerset.

I have never been inside a prison before and I was very curious and a little nervous.  We had been told to dress rather conservatively and not to bring too much stuff in with us.  When we first got there we checked in all of our things at reception and received visitors passes to wear around our necks.  Like most prisons there are many doors in and out and there are strict codes of conduct.  The prison itself smelled kind of like glue.  Here is a picture of what the main wings look like:

We did our workshop in the chapel which is very un-prison like with exception to a poster of jesus behind bars and it saying something about how jesus freed you from the bars of criminality.  One of the main workers of the prison who oversees the education programs was a man who himself had a BA and MA in theatre (How crazy is that??)  

We moved all of the chairs so that we had a big open floor space.  Then we waited for the inmates to arrive.  There were about 11-12 of them of varying ages.  There uniforms consisted of blue/grey sweatpants and sweaters with velcro sneakers.  At first we all seemed a little nervous of each other but as things got going everyone was able to relax.  We did varying theatre games that drew attention to focus, and creating images and scenes.  We then presented our piece that we had created.  It was really great how participatory most of the inmates were.  A lot of them talked a lot about our scene and proposed many different solutions to Patti's dilemma.  

*note I have changed the names of the inmates for privacy reasons

One inmate named Jack was one of the most perceptive and interesting of the group.  A very intelligent person he always had good insights about the scenes and was highly participatory.  He said that in his cell he reads John Milton all day and we had a very interesting conversation about biology and dodos.  

Another inmate named William was a former boxer and had a little girl around Nali's age.  We talked about the kids, boxing, and his short term memory problems.  

The youngest of the group, named Josh, was very cocky and had many tattoos.  He was highly participatory but you could tell that he would probably have a short fuse and liked to be the one in control.  He gave a lot of high fives and sort of hit on Kaley.  

We didn't ask them about  what they had done to get in there and they didn't volunteer.  I could see why because how could you not judge someone by knowing there crime?  Some of the inmates didn't participate as much for various reasons.

At the end of the day we were in small groups and they were creating performance.  This was for me the most interesting part of the day.  I was with 3 inmates;  Jack (the intellectual) Sean (the Joker) and Calvin ( the recluse)  We broke into groups and talked about issues that were important to us.  I was with Sean and he said he didn't have any ideas so I went first.  I talked about how bullying in general is an issue I feel strongly about and how it is important as adults and teachers to recognize and try to prevent it if possible.  That got Sean talking a lot because he was bullied as a child.  He then started talking about communication and neglect within a family is a big issue for him.  Jack and Andrew had been talking about Jack's issue of people (referring to inmates) are judged on what they have done and not for how the are working towards becoming better.  He and Andrew hadn't realized they were supposed to switch and Andrew didn't get a chance to talk about an issue.  I think he was a little put off by not getting a turn because he then got defensive and said he hadn't had any ideas anyway and that nothing really bothers him except not being able to drink.  The other two said that there had to be something that bothered him so we started talking about a few different issues to help encourage his participation.  

We then decided that the issue we were going to make a performance on was that of people being judged by their past actions and not by their present actions.  We had to come up with a person who would be stuck in the middle.  At first Fiona stopped by and suggested that if you were a father and a pedophile moved back into the neighborhood after being rehabilitated and deemed safe by the state and would you let your daughter play with a girl who was related to this man.  However that suggestion didn't really work because most of the men were fathers and the setting of the issue was too specific.  We then changed it to a community leader organizing the community Christmas party.  A person deemed a sex offender but who has gone through rehabilitation has moved back in with his family in the neighborhood.  The community leader is then faced with two community members who threaten to take away monetary and social support from the christmas party as well as ostracizing the community member if this person deemed a sex offender is aloud to come to come to the party.  Then a figure of a priest comes in and gives the point of view about forgiveness and tolerance and giving someone a second chance.  Although we had originally said the person to invite or not invite was a sex offender we didn't specify what they had done in the scene.  We gave suggestion but it could have been that this person was a former prisoner, or considered a sex offender because of consensual sex that was then turned into a statutory rape charge.  We wanted to high light that we are often quick to judge and set up stereotypes on other people based on their past actions.  How can we move past that and work towards reintroducing someone into society slowly and carefully without painting a bullseye on them?

At the end of the day we went around and asked what the inmates had thought of the workshop.  We got a resounding positive response.  Calvin, the man who had been defensive at first spoke up and said that he had never done drama in his life.  He never knew he could and that he actually enjoyed it and found what we did really interesting.  Many of them asked if we were going to come back and do more workshops.  Fiona and Laura are trying to see if we can.  I would like to.  

Before we went in we were told that even though most of the men would probably come across as very nice that we had to be able to realize that they are still people would have committed crimes and that many of them have been in and out of the prison system through out their lives.  Many of them know how to be manipulating.  Its kind of like the saying that no matter how cute a dog is, it still has the potential to bite you.  In the workshop setting we could all just be people and interact with one another and explore ideas.  A lot of prison theatre works hard to use models that don't "this is bad, this is good, be this way and not that."  If you are being realistic you have to work with people in ways that encourage them to discover things for themselves and to start looking at things in a different way.  This can be hard in from a prison stand point as that they usually want an educational program to produce a direct result that will benefit how the prison is seen from the outside.  But you can't force art or theatre to produce something concretely every time.  Applied theatre is about process rather than product.

I hope that we will be able to do another workshop within the prison.  It was a very educational and interesting experience for me.  One that I will not readily forget.