News

The Indian Express is my main news source in Mhaswad. It’s interesting to read about Indian politics, although difficult because to me it all seems so foreign and complicated. The international section is dominated by American news, either Obama’s new policies or something random and seemingly un-newsworthy. What’s so great about random newspapers, however, is that every once in a while they’ll publish a gem of a story introducing you to something you may not have otherwise known about. Maybe this proves my ignorance, but that’s precisely what I found in this article (republished from the LA Times) yesterday:

In California prison, play answers some difficult questions
For 23 years, Cornerstone Theater Company has aimed for dramatic immediacy by enlisting communities caught up in contemporary issues and making plays out of the stories they tell. It has performed in an Oregon cattle barn, on the roof of the deconsecrated St Vibiana’s cathedral in downtown Los Angeles and on the National Mall in Washington. But until last week, Cornerstone never had done a play behind bars.


The result, during two-plus hours at the California Institution for Women, a state prison in Corona, 45 miles southeast of Los Angeles, said something about just how immediate theatre can be.


The play — For All Time — is populated by perpetrators and victims, by a support group for ex-cons and by one for mothers of murdered children. Playwright KJ Sanchez shaped their words into rapidly shifting scenes and episodic, jump-cut stories, all aimed at getting a handle on some of the hardest questions haunting the dispensation of justice. When should those who’ve been wronged embraced mercy and forgiveness?


The playing space was a long, narrow strip, flanked on either side by the audience. About 120 inmates, a racially mixed group, sat in metal folding chairs. What, one of the ex-cons asks, is the difference between a public defender and a lawyer? “A public defender is going to get you the best deal. A lawyer is going to get you off.”


Applause greeted parts that lampooned the system for its race disparities. “Lady Liberty is blind when it comes to my kind,” actor Ramona Gonzales intoned in a poem that had been woven into the script. Its author, April Adkins, watched from a few feet away.


By intermission, Andrea Cutchon had decided to skip another obligation — a rehearsal of the prison’s Polynesian dance group — to catch the second act. “It makes you think about the things you’ve done in your life, the effect you have on people,” she said. Asked about the classic masks of comedy and tragedy tattooed on her arm, the pony-tailed young woman said that, no, they didn’t mean she was a theater buff. She’d gotten them when she was dealing drugs, and with the accompanying script, “play at your own risk,” the masks were a warning to the world: no tricks, no games, keep me smiling — or else the tragedy will be yours.


While others milled about during the break, inmate Romarilyn Baker sat quietly alone. Catharsis — that inner touching that the ancient Greeks considered the payoff of effective drama — took hold during the second act. It brought a hush to the hall, where a sign posted by the door read, “Thinking about suicide? With help comes hope! Honor your life. Talk to any staff member now.”
In a monologue delivered through tears, Marcenus “M C” Earl, himself an ex-convict who served time for a 1995 bank robbery, told of two long-separated brothers who were able to meet in a prison cell, thanks to a guard’s act of mercy.



There may have been more to the story, but that’s all that’s written online. Pretty cool, huh? Anyways, I found it really interesting. What would be wonderful, I think, is if the theater company had an opportunity to do a workshop with current prisoners to create some kind of theatrical piece. Maybe they already do that somewhere; it would certainly be worth seeing…