Sean Dobbin, who teaches at the Community High School of Vermont in the Northeast Correctional Complex calls his class “Cruciverbalism.” And yep, that really refers to crossword puzzles. But Caleb, who’s been incarcerated for 10 months, says he’s learned more than how to solve and create puzzles through these classes.  He’s learned speaking and language skills as well as what he calls how to “be the change.”  Caleb says he is also helping others by “creating a superb environment in the English language that’s easy to understand.”

Pictured here is one student with a crossword he is solving.

Dobbin came to this class though his love of puzzles. He says he is always solving puzzles and has created crosswords for the likes of the NYTimes, two accepted via the master, Will Shortz. He’s spent much of his career teaching English and always worked with seriously at-risk or incarcerated teens. The current class has been running for 4-5 months and he has seen a significant improvement in vocabulary skills. But, most importantly, he has found a fun and inviting way into teaching language arts, keeping his students engaged and challenged.

To earn credit, he says, “a student must solve a set number of puzzles, create their own puzzles, contribute to a class puzzle that is being groomed for publication, keep a vocabulary journal, keep a parts-of-speech journal, and produce written work that is guided by ‘found’ knowledge from puzzles.” Dobbin says that the prison has invested in a professional program, Crossword Compiler, a crossword-construction software program used by pros.

David, at 29, recently earned his high school diploma in 2012 at the Community High School and took the Cruciverbalism class “to try something new.” He says the class taught him “If I am determined enough and stay focused that I can accomplish any and all goals I set for myself.” David now is the librarian at the prison complex.

Pictured here, another student, working on building a crossword puzzle.

Under Vermont state law, the Vermont DOC website states that “All individuals under the age of 23, under custody of the DOC, and without high school diplomas, have a mandatory education requirement. These students are enrolled upon admission.” The Community High School of Vermont is accredited through the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC).

But school behind bars can be deadly. Keeping the attention of kids is not easy and engaging them in class means helping them learn, as Caleb says, how really smart they are. David too says it well when discussing what Crosswords do for students: They “work your brain and help you learn things that you never knew before.”

Dobbin feels teachers at the high school are “encouraged (and expected) to be creative with the coursework they offer.” But seriously, without giving kids behind bars opportunities to shine, there will be no door like the one below –a way into, yes, but no way out of the darkness.

I’ve been interested for years in the Italian prison theatre company featured this week in The New York Times.  Since 1988, Compagnia della Fortezza, the company named after the Medici-era fortress that houses the Volterra jail where the men are imprisoned, has performed a variety of Italian spectacles and tragedies. From Alice in Wonderland, a Theatrical Essay on the End of a Civilization to Romeo and Juliet: Mercutio Does Not Want to Die, director Amando Punzo has dedicated himself to art behind bars.

This photo is one of many in the photo essay by Clara Vannuci, an Italian photographer who has documented in amazing pictures the essence of Punzo’s vision.

For 21 years, working five hours a day, six days a week, Punzo has embarked on a challenging repertoire for the company, including per the NYTimes in an article they wrote in 2009,  “plays based on works by Brecht, Peter Handke, and even the tale of Pinocchio.”  He says that it is not therapy that drives him but creating good theatre.

I too felt that way during the eight plays I directed behind bars. The idea was not to go after building self-esteem –although that happened — but to go after revealing the truth of the play and getting the women to be the best they could be at portraying their roles. Punzo says “It’s not about giving the inmates an outlet or a recreational break. It’s work.”  The side effect of theatre programs behind bars are self-respect, community building and a love for the stage.

The Italians love art so much, the rumor goes, that the prisons would rather risk an arrest than not show their performances to other Italians. Many shows tour and many prisoners work outside during the day. And believe it or not over half the 205 prisons in Italy have acting companies. Compagnia della Fortezza has won some of Italy’s most prestigious theatre awards and houses a gourmet restaurant where prisoners work and serve food to the public.

A 2009 show — Alice in Wonderland, a Theatrical Essay on the End of a Civilization  (photo below)— was loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s masterwork, but the text wove in soliloquies from other authors, in this case Shakespeare (predominantly Hamlet) but also Genet, Pinter, Chekhov and Heiner Müller.

While Punzo, who has an acting background, creates a new play every July, his dream is to create a stable repertory company, with a winter season and a permanent theater, which would allow him to pay the actors. Ah Italy!

Photographer Vannuci relayed in this week’s article how she asked a prisoner why no one tried to escape. The response reflected how much theatre has the potential to change lives:  “Why should I run? Where would I go? Twenty years I’ve lived in prison. Now I have something to live for. Life has meaning.”