As I was unable to attend any of the Martin Luther King
events this past January, I decided to watch the documentary entitled Shakespeare Behind Bars to further my knowledge about the complex
situation prevalent in the American prison system. Shakespeare Behind Bars is the story of a program that began in
1999 at Luther Luckett Correctional Facility in La Grange, Kentucky,
in which around 15 to 20 inmates put together and perform a Shakespeare play
each year. This facility is only a medium security prison, but still contains
some inmates who are life-long prisoners. Luther Luckett was originally built
to house around 485-500 inmates, but, in 2003, the year this documentary was
filmed, the prison held over 1100 inmates. Despite this overcrowding, the
warden, as mentioned in the film, believes that it is the job of prisons to
prepare inmates for life outside in the ‘real world’ while they are locked up.
Because of this, programs such as Shakespeare
Behind Bars are encouraged and funded in Luther Luckett as much as
possible.
While
watching this documentary, one overarching theme that stuck out to me was that
of identity, and how many inmates have a difficult time formulating their
self-identities after they are put into prison. This stems partly from the
discrimination they face from those in society who will always look at them as
being ‘murderers’ or ‘sex offenders,’ etc, but also comes from the laborious
work they face in overcoming
self-loathing for the crimes they have committed. Throughout the documentary,
many of the inmates state their crimes and some regrets for things they have
done in their past. One inmate, Hal, talks about how he had trouble finding his
sexual identity as a boy. Because he grew up in a conservative family, he said
he always felt pressured to marry a wife and have kids, and when he fell in
love with his wife, he was happy. However, he had never learned to deal with
his pent up aggression and feelings, and would sometimes not know how to handle
his wife’s emotions. One day when his wife was feeling overwhelmed with the
pregnancy she had just tested positive for, Hal didn't know how to react, and so
dropped a hairdryer into the warm bath he had just drawn for her, which
electrocuted her to death. Hal said, through tears, that he continues to
struggle with accepting himself after committing this crime, especially since
he lied about it being an accident for ten years. This is where Shakespeare comes
in.
Hal’s role
in the 2003 production of Shakespeare Behind
Bars was Prospero, the protagonist in the play The Tempest. In this play, Prospero is usurped of his throne by his
brother Antonio, and spends over 10 years on an island thinking of how he can
punish him. However, in the end, Prospero ends up forgiving his brother’s crime
after he has trapped Antonio and his crew on the island where he is living. This
narrative of Prospero’s life was one reason that Hal chose to play Prospero in The Tempest, as he was able to encounter
the ability to move on and find his own forgiveness in the character of
Prospero. This, then, is how Shakespeare has been able to work so powerfully in
the lives of the inmates who participate in this program. Inmates select their
own characters in the plays they are going to present, focusing on parts that
they can personally relate to. Curt Tofland, the volunteer director, who refers
to himself as the production’s “facilitator,” says that the reason these inmates
are able to connect so closely to Shakespeare’s work revolves around the similarities
they hold with the actors who would have been performing Shakespeare’s work in
the sixteenth century. In this time, the actors who would’ve put on the play
were considered to be pick-pockets and murderers, just as the inmates at Luther
Luckett. However, the powerful, timeless themes that penetrate Shakespeare’s
works have been able to, even to this day, connect inmates like the ones at
Luther Luckett to the self-forgiveness they need to begin to accept themselves
as people.
Nevertheless,
self-forgiveness can still be difficult to show to the rest of society, as inmate
stigmas (as was previously mentioned), tend to cloud any chance of parole or
sentence-reversal that may be available to the individuals who have committed
first degree crimes. Sammie, one of the most faithful Shakespeare group members
who played the role of Trinculo in The
Tempest, is in charge of the computer lab at Luther Luckett, and was even
offered a job with the software company who donated the machines, as he was
able to create some new programs for the computers. Toward the end of the
practice sessions for The Tempest,
Sammie meets with the parole board to look at options for his release, which he
is pretty confident he will be able to secure. One of Sammie’s major worries
throughout this process, though, is that even if he is released, he will not be
able to function at the same emotional level outside of the correctional
facility as he does within, as he will lose his community and newfound sense of
self. However, he is denied parole for another six years, and, somewhat
disappointedly, continues to serve as computer lab specialist because the
parole board doesn't see evidence that he has changed.
All in all,
then, how does the documentary Shakespeare
Behind Bars relate to the field of English Education in general and my
future career as a teacher? Shakespeare and his plays have become a big part of
high school English curricula, as many students are required to read and
understand plays such as Romeo and Juliet,
Hamlet, and Macbeth. However, with the push for “getting through” texts by many
schools for testing purposes, and also the inability of many teachers to teach
Old English Shakespearean works in a way that students can connect too, a lot
of high school students end up discarding Shakespeare as irrelevant and
unimportant. Another factor that contributes to this de-valuation is the role
of many literary theories, which advocate against the liberal humanist stance
of finding timeless morals in Old English works, saying that they are
Eurocentric and biased. Nevertheless, I believe that, as a future educator, it
is my job to try and teach students to try and re-find some of these values
that are present in Shakespeare. In interacting with some of the students I've had in my placement at Goshen
High School this past
semester, I know that there are students who experience the same feelings of
identity crises and loneliness that the inmates at Luther Luckett have. In
future classes that I teach, too, there will be students who face abusive
situations at home, who have gone to juvenile detention, or who struggle with
finding their sexual identity. I believe, though, that through presenting Shakespearean
characters, works, and themes in a way with which students can connect,
students may be able to appreciate the complex, life-like values and situations
that literature can portray, and perhaps through seeing their own lives reflected
in literature, learn the path to personal identity fulfillment.
