TEDxEast - Curt Tofteland - This thing of darkness

"Performing New Lives" in Madison, Wisconsin

"Performing New Lives" Book Tour: Milwaukee

The Performing New Lives book tour came to Milwaukee on Friday, and played to an intimate audience of five at Boswell's Bookstore on Downer. The conversation eventually turned to the question of my next project. I said that I'd like to put together a play that weaves the prisoners' personal stories into, around and one of Shakespeare's plays. One audience member mentioned Sita Sings the Blues --Nina Paley's interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana--as one possible source of inspiration. Thanks, Jessie!

Performing New Lives Book Tour: Racine, Wisconsin

On Thursday, December 9, Jonathan Shailor gave a talk on Performing New Lives: Prison Theatre to a gathering of 10 brave souls who made their way through the snow to the Olympia Brown Unitarian Universalist Church in Racine, Wisconsin. The event was sponsored by the Racine Coalition for Peace and Justice.

Some comments from the participants:

Providing a group of prisoners with sanctuary provides them with that magic circle of the theatre. It's a safe place to read, learn, perform and be part of a trusting group.

~ Andy McLean, Shakespeare scholar and Professor Emeritus of English, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, participant in The Shakespeare Prison Project of Wisconsin

Richness of acting, and pulling from their own tragedies, made the plays more poignant.

~ Kay Gregor, Executive Director, Racine Literacy Council; participant in The Shakespeare Prison Project of Wisconsin

I cheer you on! Wonderful! It is an experience of transformation for all involved, including the family and friends of the prisoners!

~ Mary S. Kugel

"Performing New Lives" at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside

At a warm reception in the Faculty/Staff Lounge, Meade Palidofsky reads from her chapter on "Fabulous Females." Meade and Performing New Lives editor Jonathan Shailor spent the past two days with each other, sharing information and stories about their work, and developing some exciting new ideas in the process!

JKP author Jonathan Shailor on the benefits of prison theatre and his new book ‘Performing New Lives’

JKP author Jonathan Shailor on the benefits of prison theatre and his new book ‘Performing New Lives’

Click on image to enlarge!

Performing New Lives Book Tour: San Francisco

Judith Tannenbaum (author of "By Heart" (with Spoon Jackson) and Ava Roy (director, "Hamlet on Alcatraz") attended tonight's reading.

The far-ranging discussion included a consideration of the value and impact of Shakespeare's works for men and women of color. One participant raised the concern that people of color would not see their own experiences recognized and validated in Shakespeare's plays. Others responded by pointing out the trans-cultural archetypal relevance of Shakespeare's themes and characters, and the relevance that all great drama has for actors: by bringing us out of ourselves into the imagined world of the other, theatre can help us to know ourselves more intimately.

"Performing New Lives" Book Tour Kicks Off in Sacramento

At Carol's Books, author Amie Dowling shares a method for helping people to connect and to begin to tell their story.

Teya Sepinuck, author/contributor to "Performing New Lives: Prison Theatre"

a report from Northern Ireland

Retrieved 10-28-2010 from

http://www.cityofculture2013.com/Our-2013-Bid/Voices/Teya-Sepinuck-Theatre-of-Witness.aspx

Teya Sepinuck/Theatre of Witness

27/10/2010

A groundbreaking Derry theatre project that brings healing from the Troubles

Twelve months have passed since the Theatre of Witness programme made their public debut, when Derry hosted the most powerful night of theatre anyone present could recall.

Many memorable dramas have been written over the last 30 years dealing with the Troubles, some even based on the experiences of those who have suffered during them, but unlike most others, this had real people taking to the stage to tell their own story in a dramatised context. We Carried Your Secrets, which premiered at the Playhouse on October 22nd 2009 before touring the Northwest, broke the mould and made a profound impact on our understanding of what theatre can achieve in healing too.

A voice for the voiceless

The concept behind Theatre of Witness was first developed by dancer, choreographer and trained counsellor Teya Sepinuck in Philadelphia 25 years ago. Often dealing with people who had been alienated from society and who had suffered deeply, the concept has given a form of expression to people who would otherwise have remained voiceless, allowing them to communicate their story in the most direct and powerful way. Non-judgemental and collaborative, people are given space, freedom and permission to express deeply rooted feelings, memories and ideas within the dramatic form. Perfecting the technique over many different productions, Teya has adapted the concept for refugees, survivors and perpetrators of domestic abuse, the homeless, those affected by violence and prisoners and their families, among others.

Time is right

While the vast majority of Theatre of Witness Productions have been in the US, it was Pauline Ross, Director of the Playhouse, who encouraged Teya to come to the city, having been hugely impressed by the DVDs she had seen of previous productions. “Pauline felt that Northern Ireland was ready for this concept”, Teya says, “and I came over for six weeks two years ago to conduct some initial interviews. It was an intensive period as I talked to over 40 people, some several times, from ex-combatants in the Troubles to parents whose children had committed suicide.” Having gained a wider perspective of the kinds of issues involved, Teya then chose seven performers she felt would work, both individually and collectively.

Daunting challenge

For thirty years, the people of Northern Ireland suffered terribly during the Troubles and the legacy of that conflict has impacted even on a generation barely old enough to remember it. It must have been a daunting challenge for Teya, coming in from the outside, but she believes there were positives as well as negatives to being an outsider. “My background is Jewish and Buddhist, with no Irish roots at all”, she says. “So I was able to listen to people’s stories without preconceptions. Pauline said she believed this would have been much more difficult for an insider, though it’s important to say I had great help from local people like Pauline, Eamonn Deane, and Nicky Harley who co-ordinated the project here”.

Bringing people together

The seven performers included the daughter of a former RUC officer who struggled with what it meant to grow up holding that secret, ex-Republican and ex-Loyalist combatants, a former RUC officer who’d been on the body recovery team at the Omagh bomb, a young man whose life had threatened to go off the rails and the son of a Sinn Fein councillor struggling to make sense of his life after his father’s assassination. Simply to bring people together in one group who would never normally have met would be considered an achievement but Teya also had to draw their stories out, give them confidence in the process and help them interact as a group. It was, as always, a painstaking business. “There were many interviews,” Teya says, “and I would take endless notes. Then we would bring the group together and they would share stories with each other. I would go away and write the script but would always go back to them and make sure they were happy with what was written. Nothing was kept that they weren’t happy with”.

Graphically honest

More a series of vignettes and experiences with a common theme than a conventional plot the play also uses music (from the Ulster Orchestra’s Director Brian Irvine), imagery (provided by filmmaker John McIlduff) and movement. One of the most important aspects is the way others in the group help tell the individual’s story, recreating their experiences so generational and religious divisions become blurred in the audience’s mind. In this way the audience is presented with graphically honest accounts of violence, inflicted and received, and of deeply entrenched collective traumas like Bloody Sunday and Omagh, in a way that is without judgement.

Overcoming division

There were powerful moments within the development of the play too. 23-year-old Fionnbharr, whose Sinn Fein father was murdered when he was five, initially found it difficult to interact with Robin, a serving PSNI officer, whose contribution was portrayed on film as his presence live on stage would have created a security risk. By the time they had worked together enough to form a relationship, Robin asked the young man to shake his hand, a symbolic moment. Instead Fionnbharr embraced him. By the night of the premiere, Teya recalls, laughing, they were close enough to construct a plan together to torment her.

Supporting each other

Teya saw bonds forming during the production that would not have been possible before. “The inter-generational bonds were particularly strong”, she says “and lots of contacts have grown out of this. They had to support each other on stage, each playing a part in the other’s stories, so they came to rely on each other and work with each other. They were nervous, they’re not actors, and the emotion was obvious. But they had ownership of their own experiences. Offstage, you see friendships grow and the sharing of emotion. It’s very moving.”

Open heart surgery

For anyone who has witnessed the deep divisions and trauma of Northern Ireland during the Troubles it is an extraordinary experience to see such honesty, courage and, ultimately healing, come from an evening of drama. But just as remarkable has been the response from the audience. One by one, after the performance, they got up and shared their deeply felt emotion. Many felt their own lives had been transformed by the event. Some talked of being overwhelmed to witness so much unbearable pain, of the power of the emotion they had felt, but perhaps it was best summed up by the member of the audience who declared its impact to be like that of open heart surgery on the wounds of Derry.

A hub of healing

For the future (the Peace funded programme is a two-year one), Teya hopes that one consequence of the city’s success in the UK City of Culture Contest will be to see Derry become a hub of such groundbreaking work, where people’s true stories can be developed in drama. “I think this would be the ideal place for such work, a centre of expertise to deal in all kinds of ideas and issues that arise from conflict where drama can help lead towards understanding”.

Touring

Having premiered at the Playhouse Theatre last week, Theatre of Witness’, second production, I Once Knew A Girl, which explores the Troubles through the often forgotten perspective of women, this week embarked on a 10-date tour. The tour began in Strabane on Tuesday and continues with dates in Omagh, Letterkenny, Armagh, Coleraine, Enniskillen, Ballymena and takes in a home town performance in the Waterside Theatre on November 16th, before finishing in Belfast on November 24.

For more details check out the Theatre of Witness website at www.theatreofwitness.org

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An Interview with Buzz Alexander, Founder, Prison Creative Arts Project

Performing New Lives: Prison Theatre

Jonathan Shailor, Editor

BOOK TOUR

SACRAMENTO

With special guests:

Amie Dowling, Contributor, University of San Francisco

Mila Green, Prison Arts Gallery/Safe Streets Arts Foundation

Saturday, November 13, 6:00-8:30 pm:

Carol’s Books, Sacramento, CA

1913 Del Paso Blvd.

Sacramento, CA 95815

(between El Camino and Arden Way)

916-335-9094

SAN FRANCISCO

With special guest:

Ava Roy, Director, Hamlet on Alcatraz

Monday, November 15, 7:00 pm:

Modern Times Bookstore, San Francisco, CA

888 Valencia Street 


San Francisco, CA 94110

415-282-9246

KENOSHA

With Special Guest:

Meade Palidofsky, Founder and Artistic Director, Storycatchers Theatre

Friday, December 3, 2:15-3:00 pm:

University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Kenosha, WI

Campus Library: Faculty/Staff Lounge

900 Wood Road

Kenosha, WI 53141

262-595-2218

RACINE

Thursday, December 9, 7:00 pm:

Sponsored by the Racine Coalition for Peace and Justice

Olympia Brown Unitarian Universalist Church


625 College Avenue

Racine, WI 53403

262-634-0659

MILWAUKEE

Friday, December 10, 7:00 pm:

Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, WI

2559 Downer Ave.

Milwaukee, WI 53211

414-332-1181

MADISON

Saturday, December 11, 2:00 pm:

Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative, Madison, WI

Home of “Books to Prisoners”

426 West Gilman Street

Madison, WI 53703

608-257-3050

BOSTON

With Special Guests:

Sharon Lajoie, author and contributor, "Performing New Lives"

Jean Trounstine, author of "Shakespeare Behind Bars"

January 2011:

Pine Manor College, Chestnut Hill, MA

(details to be announced)

CHICAGO

With Special Guest:

Meade Palidofsky, Founder and Artistic Director, Storycatchers Theatre

February 2011:

After-words Bookstore, Chicago, IL

(details to be announced)

NEW YORK

With Special Guests:

Brent Buell, Judy Dworin, and Julia Taylor, authors/contributors to

"Performing New Lives: Prison Theatre"

March 18, 2011:

East Side Institute, New York, NY

Agnes Wilcox (Prison Performing Arts): A new blog!

An excerpt from a recent post:

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2010

Locked down -- terribly inconvenient

Rehearsed The Caucasian Chalk Circle from 1-4pm, as usual. The actors were released at four, but returned to our classroom, as the institution was in cease movement. One actor, a longtimer, warned that we probably wouldn't have Spoken Word poetry class tonight because an emergency exercise for staff had begun, and would take hours. How many hours? Lots.

Follow Agnes Wilcox's reflections on her prison theatre work at http://prisonperformingarts.blogspot.com/

Hamlet at Missouri Eastern Correctional Center

Prison Performing Arts (St. Louis, Missouri)

Agnes Wilcox, Founder and Artistic Director

Laura Bates at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility

Laura Bates, associate professor of English, journeys inside the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility to teach Shakespeare's criminal tragedies to inmates.

Curt Tofteland on "Shakespeare Behind Bars"

KET Local Video Player

One to One with Bill Goodman

Music for at-risk kids: Chicago Symphony Orchestra participates in corrections performance - chicagotribune.com

Music for at-risk kids: Chicago Symphony Orchestra participates in corrections performance - chicagotribune.com

Storycatchers Theatre, Meade Palidofsky, Founder & Artistic Director

Book announcement

Performing New Lives: Prison Theatre

Jonathan Shailor (Editor). London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Performing New Lives contains essays by 14 facilitators of prison theatre programs across the United States. In sharing their compelling experiences and observations, the authors show how prison theatre programs can function as sanctuaries within correctional facilities, where inmates can safely explore their own vulnerability, as well as empathy for others. By working intensively with volunteer facilitators and a diverse group of inmates over an extended period of time, prisoners have the opportunity to practice commitment, discipline, and teamwork--skills that will be essential for their survival and reintegration into the community. Many of these programs include performances for other prisoners, and for public audiences, a wonderful opportunity for prisoners to realize their capacity and worth.

BUY IT NOW!