Some years ago my friend and colleague, Curt Tofteland, founded a Shakespeare company behind bars. This was at the same time, ironically that I published my first book. And when we discovered we had coincidentally  chosen the same name for our projects– "Shakespeare Behind Bars," we could not help but be connected. The mission of Toftland's company was always "to offer theatrical encounters with personal and social issues to the incarcerated, allowing them to develop life skills that will ensure their successful reintegration into society."

After five years of planning, Tofteland has worked out a terrific Shakespeare in Prisons Conference hosted by the University of Notre Dame on Friday, November 15, and Saturday, November 16, 2013. The conference,for starters, will feature keynote addresses and screenings by Toftland about Shakespeare Behind Bars.

Sammie, Demond and Big D work on an entrance. Courtesy of ShakespeareBehindBars.org

Tom Magill, the founder of the Educational Shakespeare Company and director of the Irish film Mickey B, an amazing rendition of Shakespeare's Macbeth, will also be a conference highlight.

Photo from Micky B posted on Changing Lives, Changing Minds

The conference aims to bring together artists and educators engaged in transformational arts programs. There are many of us who use or have used Shakespeare in prisons across the United States (and the world) with incarcerated populations. The goal of the conference is to promote a collaborative learning forum, explore craft and allow networking time for practitioners.

See the site here to find out more about registration and housing but it is all incredibly reasonable.

In honor of the work, I give you Shylock and Portia from my production of  The Merchant of Venice at Framingham's Women's Prison in Massachusetts.

Photo from 1988 production of Merchant

These photos give a glimpse into how deeply Shakespeare can penetrate the performer. I applaud all of the practitioners who defy the doubters. Hopefully this conference will pack the house!

This week I wrote on Boston Magazine about a new Venture that gets Homeless people back to work, called
"CarryON!" In particular, it helps the homeless with criminal backgrounds get on their feet again by offering them a business opportunity.

Here are some photos that weren't used in the article I posted online. Tres cool! Fred Smith one of the project's founders and Development Director at Boston's St. Francis House along with intern, Patricia Guiao, are pictured below. Guiao took all the photos posted here.

I'll be honest. I went in very skeptical of this series, Orange is the New Black, which is only on Netflix. Although I loved Weeds in the beginning of its run, I thought the show dragged and moved into absurdity in its last years. Jenji Kohan, whose quirky touch magnified the drug scene on the west coast with an unlikely drug dealer made famous by Mary Louis Parker, has a similar "who knew what hit me" heroine in the form of Piper Chapman, the Waspy naive New Yorker who managed to get caught her one time as drug mule.

photo via Television Blend

But to its credit, the so-called "dramedy," while it moves slowly and is lacking in depth, does have some moments about prison life that in the first two episodes I've watched, touched me.

Full disclosure, I also thought I might be a little jealous: my book Shakespeare Behind Bars was optioned one year for a movie and then 9/11 happened so creating theatre behind bars never got made into the full blown movie we hoped it would have become; and then, who knew–another year, it was optioned by Charlize Theron for a TV series. But her company broke up so again no go. However, I got free money and learned as Ernest Hemingway said, not to try and retain any control of books when someone wants to make them into movies: "Drive to Nevada, throw the book over the border and drive away."  So it was natural that I was suspicious and imagine that the real life Piper has many mixed feelings watching her life magnified and in some ways, twisted by film.

But here's what I like:

1) That the prison dramedy captures the sense of community of women behind bars at  poignant moments. And that it breaks any notion of soft and cuddly pretty quickly.

2) That it is possible to go to Federal Prison on a single insane crime– being a drug mule. This is something not often treated in a series like this and certainly not often about a woman. The fact that her crime landed her in prison for a year and a half is obviously a waste of taxpayer's money like it is for so many unknowing people who make stupid decisions. This is further underscored by the fact that the real life Piper Kerman who wrote the memoir on which the series is based went to Smith College.

3) That we get to know characters through flashbacks about their lives while the drama continues inside the prison.

4) That there's the kind of totally true non-sequitur that happens to people when they first get to prison: Chapman begs her fiance' to not watch Madmen without her and hopes they'll binge on it when she gets out of prison.

5) That there are some interesting characters; that the issue of Chapman's having a lesbian lover before the fiance' and before prison is actually handled with some of the best humor.

6) The truth of finding your way inside prison always involves some risk.

What I don't like:

1) The pacing. Slow. Tedious.

2) Piper's naivite to contrast with women in prison who are "rough cons" is a little too much

3) Sex in the shower scenes — come on. please. big deal.

4) The female brute guard is exaggerated even beyond the other exaggerations

I have to agree with The New York Times here and this is a GOOD thing:  "It’s a showcase for a large group of black and Latino actresses who for the most part have not had regular roles in series before this, including Dascha Polanco, as a quiet inmate who is drawn to a guard, and Uzo Aduba, who is scary and hilarious as Crazy Eyes."

Overall, however, I will watch all 13 episodes of the Netflix series just to see what someone does with a series about women behind bars. Here's the cast with fictional names in parentheses:
Taylor Schilling (Piper Chapman),
Jason Biggs (Larry Bloom)
Laura Prepon (Alex Vause)
Kate Mulgrew (Galina Reznikov)
Danielle Brooks (Tasha Jefferson)
Pablo Schreiber (Pornstache Mendez)
Natasha Lyonne (Nicky Nichols)
Uzo Aduba (Crazy Eyes)
Taryn Manning (Pennsatucky)
Laverne Cox (Sophia Burset)
Yael Stone (Lorna Morello)
Samira Wiley (Poussey)
Dascha Polanco (Dayanara Diaz)
Matt McGorry (John Bennett)
Elizabeth Rodriguez (Aleida Diaz)
Lea DeLaria (Big Boo)
Selenis Leyva (Gloria Mendoza).

Today, in honor of our freedom, I'm posting poems from prisoners who aren't, or at one time, were not free.

image from the University of York, UK

-Institutionalized-

As a female prison employee walks pass
I inhale and hold
arrested in my lungs her perfume
which reminds me of
freedom.

–Roland F. Stoecker Jr. 3/27/13 posted on Between the Bars

Pictures of a Daughter, Viewed in Prison

You set the photos down,
spreading time around you panorama-style.
Button-nosed baby, toddler, little girl, bigger girl:
Your eyes roam the chain of living paper dolls,
the side-by-side smiles posed just for you.
Time cannonballs you in the gut.
You think, When the hell did all this happen?
How did I miss so much?
Too late to cry, too late to mourn
the baby smell, the small heft, the music of her giggles.
The middle photos blur, become
the space between your first photo and your latest.
This is the abyss into which time has fallen.
Your reverie broken,
you gather up your painful collection and rise.
The clock reads 2:28.
Time has just stolen another hour.

—Christina Snow,  published in I'll Fly Away edited by Wally Lamb and posted on Oprah's website

Sequoia

Bark a mile thick and tough as anything you’ve seen
No sap in this old tree
The wind and fog know better than to venture near
Lest they be swallowed
I strip the fetid earth of all that is good in it
And cast my shadow on all that come near
I am invincible
Indestructible
Beyond reproach
For no one dares to challenge me
The lion of the forest
They’re smart for that
Because they do not know of what I’m capable
Neither do they know
That it is lonely when
There are no arms large enough to hold you
In their embrace

–Karter Kane Reed, in a letter to me

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.