Hutchinson Correctional Facility, Kansas
Editor's note: This article was originally published in the News section of the Bethel College website on January 27, 2016.
by Melanie Zuercher
NORTH
NEWTON, KAN. – When Professor of Communication Arts John McCabe-Juhnke
put his former “pilot project” into Bethel College’s interterm
curriculum, he knew his students would learn things that surprised them.
McCabe-Juhnke
has been doing prison theater for more than a decade. In 2014, he and
student volunteers spent January working with inmates at Hutchinson
Correctional Facility (HCF) to produce
Inside Story, a series of dramatic sketches based on true stories and student and inmate journals.
“The one thing you can count on when working in prison,” McCabe-Juhnke says, “is that there’s always going to be
something.”
This
time the “something” was HCF going on lockdown 2½ weeks in, following a
series of inmate fights. None of the 10 men in the theater class was
involved. But all visits were cancelled, and the “inside” performances
of
Inside Story, one for the prison population and one for the public with security clearance, were cancelled with them.
The campus performances of
Inside Story will go on as scheduled, Feb. 5 and 6 at 7 p.m. in Krehbiel Auditorium in Luyken Fine Arts Center on the Bethel campus.
Ticket
prices are $6 for adults and $4 for senior citizens and non-Bethel
students (Bethel students are free on Friday and pay $1 on Saturday).
One dollar from every ticket sold will go to the Offender Victim
Ministries of Newton’s Prison Ministries, which includes arts projects
as well as the long-running prison visitation program M2.
Tickets
are available at Thresher Shop on campus, open weekdays 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
(phone 316-284-5205), or at the door, subject to availability.
There will be talk-back sessions after each performance, with the students reflecting on their interterm experience.
“This
is the first time I’ve experienced lockdown of the whole prison,”
McCabe-Juhnke says. “I have lost actors [because of their personal
issues], or had guys unable to come because a section was on lockdown.
There’s always something.”
The students are, of course, disappointed, he said.
“I
had them, as an alternative assignment, write letters to the inmates.
These are not to be sent – I’m not sure we’re even allowed to
communicate with them. There are some really good letters expressing how
it felt that ‘things were really starting to take off,’ and then got
cancelled.”
Up to this point, the 11 students and 10 inmates have
all been keeping journals, which they periodically exchanged with each
other to read.
“Journal after [inmate] journal talked about how
much they enjoyed the experience and what a privilege it was to be able
to work with college students,” McCabe-Juhnke said.
“This
[lockdown] will be included in the story we tell,” he continued. “The
concept remains the same, allowing the audience to see the plays we
worked at [with the inmates] and hear the context we worked in.
“The difference now – it won’t be how successful our performances were inside but how they got changed by circumstances.”
Inside Story
will run around 70 minutes, and include four short sketches of about 10
minutes each, interspersed with material from the class, which they
developed collaboratively until the lockdown.
For Bethel’s
January interterm, students choose one class for intensive study for
three to four weeks. Classes meet every day for three hours and often
include field trips or even overseas study (this year in Europe and
China).
The class offers either Cross-Cultural Learning or Peace,
Justice and Conflict Studies credit, both General Education
requirements.
“I signed up for this class for the cross-cultural
credit,” says Allie Brown, senior business major from Hesston. “I
definitely got that but really, what we are seeing and hearing while in
prison, around men who are ‘other,’ it’s almost indescribable.
“BC
and HCF students [were] combined and for two hours every Monday,
Wednesday and Friday, we [were] equals — I am no higher than an inmate
and the HCF residents are no lower than a college student.”
Joshua
Lewis, senior communication arts major from Rialto, California, and
Abby Phillips, junior social work major from Maple Hill, both saw
performances of
Inside Story two years ago.
“I realized
John was actually making it into a class, and I wanted to take another
class with him,” Lewis says. “The way that production went two years
ago, I felt like it had a lot of insight. With where I come from, I’ve
seen both sides of the [incarceration] issue. It was good to see it made
into something not just negative.”
“I knew a little bit about
what to expect, but I still didn’t know what the men would be like,”
Phillips says. “We have to write journals, so I wrote in one of mine:
‘We don’t see the guys named “Razor” and “Crusher,” and I’m OK with
that. But it’s still a maximum-security prison.’
“In our
training, they made it sound like the inmates would try and seduce us,
which was really weird. I am not getting that from any of them. They’re
guys who messed up somewhere along the line and now they’re paying for
it.”
“Coming into this class I was scared, worried, nervous,
whatever word you want to use,” Brown adds. “It’s hard to enter a new
place when you don’t know what to expect. I expected our experience to
be intimidating, and I hoped for kindness. I found both.”
“I’ve
noticed that everyone cares about the guys at Hutch,” says Kaylie
Penner, freshman from Moundridge. “We’re all invested in all of it,
inmates included.
“I went in with the mindset that everyone is
human and no one’s defined by where they live or by their worst act,
that humanity is still there,” she continues. “I was kind of surprised
how easy it was to stick with that, and that developing relationships
[with the inmates] was a lot easier than I thought it would be.
“I still had questions I wanted to ask some of them,” she says a little sadly, “and now I won’t get to.”
“Something
really surprising is how excited the inmates were for it,” Phillips
says. “There are a couple who have been doing prison theater as long as
John has been doing it, but there are a few others who said ‘I’ve never
acted before, I’ve never done anything dramatic before, but I’m so ready
for this. It’s not just another chance to be out of my cell.’”
“It [was] surprisingly easy to work with these men,” Brown adds, “and their dedication is impressive.”
She
continues, “What have I learned? Well it’s not a new concept but rather
reinforcement of an old one: We do not live in a black-and-white world.
People aren’t good or bad. They are good
and bad.
“I
know that whatever these men did must have been horrible. I mean, they
are in maximum-security prison, for a long time. However, they are still
human beings who have shown goodness in our workshop. Bethel loves
critical thinking – they foster a lot of that.”
“The plays give
us vulnerability on both sides,” says Lewis. “For us [students], going
into HCF, we [were] on their stomping grounds. Then they come into that
room inside, where it [was] like our stomping grounds.
“[Theater gave] us a chance to work together. Without it, we’re all lost.”
“I’ve
learned to be less judgmental,” Phillips says. “As a 20-year-old girl,
that is so important. These guys are inmates but they’re so much more
than that. They had lives before prison, even though I don’t know what
those were and I don’t know what happened. They’re not ‘just an HCF
inmate.’
“I’m trying to extend that to other people I meet.”
Most
of the Bethel students in the class have little or no theater
experience. One small upside to the cancellation of visits to HCF has
been extra time to work on memorizing their parts and putting the campus
performance of
Inside Story together.
