Prisoners “Dream” with AFTLS

 

Our merry 'Midsummer' band at the Westville Correctional Facility, pictured with Shakespeare at Notre Dame Executive Director Scott Jackson (second from right)

Our merry ‘Midsummer’ cast at the Westville Correctional Facility, pictured with Shakespeare at Notre Dame Executive Director Scott Jackson (second from right).

I have never been into a prison before. Apprehensive does not come close to describing my feelings about it. From the stipulations about my underwear to the sign saying that carrying a cell phone into the prison is classified as a felony, all the rules and responsibilities, the dos and don’ts, made the anticipation of Sunday’s two-hour workshop at Indiana’s Westville Correctional Facility palpable.

Getting into Westville is a similar experience to going through airport security. We showed our ID, took off our shoes, went through a metal detector, and finally got patted down by a guard. This is where the experience began to differ from the airport; rather than being released to fly off to a sunny beach, we were held in a Sally Port. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, this is a holding area with two heavy metal mesh doors – only one opening at any one time. Finally, you are escorted in a van to the designated cellblock.

As we arrived in A3 and were led down the corridors, we felt the prisoners watching us. The initial meeting was awkward, no one knowing what the exchange was going to be. This awkwardness was eased through playing theatre games. I don’t know much about the prison system or the lives of the men incarcerated there, but I’d guess that play is not a huge part of life at Westville. We taught them our games and they taught us ones that they had done with Scott. (On Sunday I won ‘Zip, Zap, Zoom,’ a very proud moment!)

Inmates learn through Shakespeare's text at Westville Correctional Facility

Inmates learn through Shakespeare’s text at Westville Correctional Facility

Samuel Collings led us all in the click game. This is where a click is passed around the circle as if it is a ball. In our production the click represents the flower ‘love in idleness.’ After the initial games, we played with the text of The Tempest. We created a storm using our hands, the floor, plastic chairs, the walls, our voices and breath – anything we could bang and make a racket with – and what a wonderful racket we made. (The guards commented on it.) Kyle, a man covered in tattoos with a neck the size of my thigh and a voice that would give Barry White a run for his money, volunteered himself for the part of Ariel, the very airy spirit. He had us in stitches and his enthusiasm was infectious. As we moved through the edited version of The Tempest, we got to know this group very well.

On Friday, when we came back to perform the play, an inmate told me that the prisoners had reprised Wednesday’s click game and had the entire block playing it. So, when Patrick came on as Puck carrying the flower, a ripple of excitement swept across the watching audience, knowing exactly how Puck was going to pass the flower to Oberon.

AFTLS actors Samuel Collings (standing as Oberon) and Claire Redcliffe (on floor as Titania) perform a scene from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Westville Correctional Facility

AFTLS actors Samuel Collings (standing as Oberon) and Claire Redcliffe (on floor as Titania) perform a scene from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Westville Correctional Facility

The Westville shows were our first public performances of the Dream, and we couldn’t have asked for a better response. I speak for all of us when I say it was extremely rewarding and an experience we will never forget. By Friday, we had met, worked with, and become invested in many of the inmates; it was sad to leave.

Thank you Scott Jackson for organizing our week at Westville.

— Actress and Midsummer blogger, Ffion Jolly

(Note: The AFTLS Midsummer cast will return to Notre Dame in 2016 to perform and discuss their Shakespeare in prison experience at the Shakespeare in Prisons: In Practice conference January 25-27.)

 

“Midsummer” arrives at Notre Dame

The Midsummer AFTLS cast

“Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties, Above the fruited plain!”

We’ve arrived in the land of the free! (In a stretch limo no less; thanks Deb!) [Office note: the limo was the cheapest option to transport our five actors from Chicago to South Bend.] And at the risk of completely adhering to the British stereotype, I am going to talk about the weather. It has been amazing! I hadn’t packed for the beautiful Indian summer here. I have alpaca and cashmere for the winter but very little in the way of shorts and sunscreen, and it’s making me nervous about Texas in a couple of weeks…

Our first week in the US has been fairly slow-moving. We’ve had to do a lot of admin, from filling-in and rehearsing whilst battling the bewildering effects of jet lag. However, it has been a joy to finally meet the wonderful people at the end of all the emails who have also helped us through this week. Deb Gasper is an astonishing lady, organizing everything and conducting herself with the patience of a saint while we set ourselves up for the tour ahead. We have had the pleasure of meeting Becky and Heidi in finance and Peter, Scott, Aaron from Shakespeare at Notre Dame who have all been delightful.

The craft beer list at South Bend's Evil Czech Brewery

The craft beer list at South Bend’s Evil Czech Brewery

Deb, Aaron and Scott very kindly took us out for Taco Tuesday at Evil Czech Brewery where we got to experience the famous American craft beer movement first hand. (Scott’s spicy Porter had a real kick to it!) Joining us with an Irish welcome was Grant Mudge, producing artistic director of Notre Dame’s Shakespeare Festival.

In our rehearsal room this week we have been joined by Anna Kurtz-Kuk who has been a joy! So positive, useful, and insightful. I wish we could have had her with us in London too. She is about to direct a production of The Understudy and it promises to be a fantastic production if her contribution to our Midsummer is anything to go by.

Notre Dame's Golden Dome as seen from our rehearsal space, ND's historic Washington Hall.

The burning sun on the dome at Notre Dame. This picture does not do it justice. I couldn’t look at the dome it was so bright.

Rehearsals were held in Notre Dame’s historic Washington Hall, just steps away from ND’s Golden Dome. We did our second preview on Friday afternoon, a week after the first in London and got some great feedback from the audience. We’ll hopefully get some time this week to work the notes. After notes it was straight on the road to go to Valparaiso, gearing up for our Westville residency.

Saturday was our much needed day off and the day of the England vs Wales Rugby match in the Rugby Union World Cup which is going on back home.

The Indiana Dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan

View of Lake Michigan from the Indiana Dunes

Sam and Chris were keen to catch the match but failed to find anywhere in downtown Valparaiso showing it so ended up heading towards Lake Michigan where Claire, Patrick, and I had already gone to have a dip. My gosh, it was beautiful! And not as cold as the Hampstead ponds in London.

(Blog post by AFTLS actor Ffion Jolly)

A Wyoming Shakespeare Explosion

keepcalmcowboyOur next residency was at the University of Wyoming in the city of Laramie. Quite a contrast from up-state New York. It is, to British eyes at least, real cowboy country. From the hotel we could see the University complete with the motif of this state – a cowboy riding a bronco.

We were here as part of the University of Wyoming’s Shakespeare Project, a mini-festival of three student productions of Shakespeare’s popular comedies, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice.

Pictured L-R: AFTLS directors Paul O'Mahoney, Alinka Wright, Roger Lawrence with Leigh Selting, Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Wyoming.

Pictured L-R: AFTLS directors Paul O’Mahoney, Alinka Wright, Roger May with Leigh Selting, Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Wyoming.

These productions used fifteen drama majors and were done in exactly the same style as our Macbeth – five actors, twenty odd roles in each play. The slight difference was that these shows had directors, all of whom were AFTLS alums: Roger May who directed The Dream, Paul O’Mahoney who worked on Much Ado, and Alinka Wright in charge of Merchant. These three were here as part of the Eminent Artist-in-Residence Endowment and had been working with the students for about six weeks. They had been invited here, along with ourselves, by Leigh Selting who is Head of the Drama Department at the University of Wyoming.

To get here we had to catch a 6am flight from New York, which meant we expected to be pretty drowsy the following day. At the time we were picked up to go to the airport to we weren’t even sure whether the flight would take off. In weather like this you just have to go to the airport and hope for the best. We were lucky and the flight was on time.

The Rocky Mountains rise up beyond the Denver skyline.

The Rocky Mountains rise up beyond the Denver skyline.

Once at Denver we were driven across the Rocky Mountains to Laramie in a shuttle bus where the driver informed us we were about seven and a half thousand feet above sea level. The air is thin up here, although at that time I didn’t notice any difference. More of that later…

Upon arriving in Laramie we met the Residency Coordinator Leigh Selting whose house was where the faculty meeting was to take place. Most of us were a little bleary eyed but the welcome was warm and thankfully Leigh had organized food which went down very well. Thanks for that.

The following morning began with two rather unusual classes, each just over an hour long with two hundred and ten students per class sitting in a lecture hall. We don’t really do lectures as such and prefer to get the students up and acting although with space being tight this required lateral thinking from us and good will from them. We were told many of them would be ranchers, farmers, and military, so we weren’t sure how they would react. As it happened, a more positive group you couldn’t wish for, all getting involved and some coming down to the front and really going for it in some improv exercises we set up. Highly entertaining.

The witches (in red) in AFTLS's production of MACBETH  (pictured L-R): Joanna Bending, Annie Aldington, Ben Warwick, Michael Palmer, and Charles Armstrong

The witches (in red) of AFTLS’s production of MACBETH (pictured L-R): Joanna Bending, Annie Aldington, Ben Warwick, Michael Palmer, and Charles Armstrong

Jo then taught them the first witches scene of Macbeth. This scene seems to lend itself to no end of variations in performance: bikers, old folks, cheerleaders, it doesn’t matter – all seem to work and all are funny, in fact the more outlandish the better.

Our evenings were spent watching the student shows which were by turns charming, exciting and amazingly skilled. It was plainly a great experience for all those young actors as they must have felt they were not only expressing themselves dramatically but also artistically as they had to a large degree created the shows under the guidance of their directors. This no doubt would have given them ownership of each play over and above a more ‘traditional’ rehearsal process.

This week we were finally given some leniency from the weather, reaching the upper 50s with blue skies and the chance to sit outside with a coffee not huddled in Starbucks clad in thermals. Some of us took to the hotel fitness centre and I was surprised to find I couldn’t last more than about three minutes on the running machine before being doubled over and gasping for air. Was I that out of shape? Then a guy on the cycling machine turned and drawled, “Welcome to 7200 feet.” This suddenly became a concern as on the Saturday we had to do two performances and our production is pretty physical, some of the speeches and the fights require a lot of puff even at sea level but half way up a mountain? We’ll be panting for air before the first interval. Hope for the best I suppose.

WyomingSkyThe land here is open, vast and the Snowy Mountains extend beyond the horizon. This makes for spectacular views and Jo commented on how much she loved the sheer ‘size’ of the sky.

Scott Jackson, our producer and Executive Director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame, came midweek to join us and to see the Shakespeare Project for himself. Always great to see him.

Saturday came and we tried to relax in the morning keeping energy levels good. The first show went well, and as we hadn’t done it for a week were ready to go. Thankfully we were able to get through it without too much altitude strain thanks to the brilliant acoustic in the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts. We enjoyed ourselves though and thankfully the sell-out audiences were, as ever, responsive and warm in their applause. They had been the same all week with the student shows, which is hardly surprising as their achievement was high.

After the second performance there was a party that to thank the three directors of the student productions, the students themselves, and indeed to everyone who was involved in the whole project including Ruby Calvert and Jennifer Amend from Wyoming PBS who were wonderful company. Primarily the main thanks goes to the President of the University, Richard McGinity, who was prepared to back the project and whose witty and modest speech charmed us all, and in particular to Leigh Selting whose ideas and inspiration originated the festival.

shakespeare-explosion

Much Ado Actor Blog: Run at Notre Dame

Paul and the ghost light.

Our opening nights at Notre Dame take place in Washington Hall. The Hall is an old building, with bats in the rafters, but it was modernised in the 1950s. The stage is more recent than that I think and the lighting rig is good. The interior of the theatre itself is a little sparse. When I comment on that, Kathleen, who works front of house, tells me that there used to be some lovely murals of George Washington, Shakespeare, Molière, Mozart, Beethoven etc. Semi randomised great artists and the president. They were whitewashed in the 50’s, when everyone was so zealous about being austere. I ask out of curiosity if perhaps they were grotesquely badly painted. “Perhaps it’s a mercy that we are spared them”. Kathleen insists that they were quite lovely. In which case, what a shame.

And our run begins in earnest. Three nights only, and a packed house on the third, with good audiences on the first two. The show is still breathing, moments are changing, landing differently. We are surprising each other. It feels right. Specific where it needs to be and free where it needs to be. The Notre Dame audiences are reactive and vocal, and despite being a little further away from them we still feel able to include them in our world, and play to, for and with them. On the first night a small child is laughing throughout the show. On every night, the upper and lower floors stand at the end. American audiences are generous like that. Scott encourages us to hold our hands out wide to, essentially, imitate Fonzy as we take the bow. “You’re all so humble and … English.” We attempt to allow ourselves such indulgence.

On the final night, a bat comes out in the interval, and panics at all the people panicking at it. As it circles the hall, we are drawn to the monitor just in time to see it fly right onto the stage accompanied by an audible gasp, and shoot up into the rafters above the playing space. It remains there for the rest of the show, and I find myself wondering how / if we might have been able to incorporate it had it done that while we had been on stage. And also whether or not it is going to bring guano into Messina, and make Messina that little bit messier. Thankfully that’s he last we see of it.

Since we have arrived in America, we have cut over 200 lines of dialogue. It feels leaner for it, and we wonder why we ever tried to do it complete. As a group we are coming together more and more, learning to trust each other and play off each other. It’s only going to tighten and deepen over time. Notre Dame has been a delightful place to start our run. A family. A home. As we all head to Chicago in a taxi full of bags, we realise that now the tour begins in earnest. Our friends in the room, in the lighting box, in O’Rourkes afterwards, on and around the campus, they all stay there. Hereafter it’s just the five of us and the friends we make on the way. Next stop Utah. But first, a weekend in CHICAGO!

(By Al Barclay)

Much Ado Actor Blog: Prison Preview

Finally, after all the negotiation, all the work and all the time, we had our first audience. A crowd of approximately forty inmates of Westville Correctional Facility. It is located some miles out of South Bend, in what feels very much like American heartland. Long flat prairie land, cornfields stretching to the horizon, the interstate carving through the countryside like a scar. As we arrived in the parking lot, the temperature dropped, a little bit of pathetic fallacy. Here we are, shivering with cold and anticipation.

AFTLS at Westville

We wore our costumes in, and brought nothing but the props we needed. No underwired bras, no money, no mobile phones. At the door there is a tight, if friendly, security post. We arrived during visiting hours, and saw many families, and too many small frightened children, waiting to be x-rayed. It started to come home to me how these kids were seeing their daddy, and maybe their first memories – their only memories – of daddy will be in that context. Some seemed afraid, or daunted. Others all too used to it. The guards that waved us through were almost overly jolly, grinning and cracking jokes. Prison is FUN. “It’s not so friendly on the inside.” someone remarked. We eventually made it into an airlock, where an unsmiling gargoyle wordlessly gestured for us to show our passes. Once through security the atmosphere changed. Electric fences and guard towers, and a large complex of low rise secure buildings. We weren’t allowed to walk anywhere unaccompanied of course, and our escort was a chirpy young (six months pregnant) volunteer. She got us onto the bus that took us the short journey to the low security block in which we would be performing.

In the block, lots of wooden panels. Prayers mounted on the walls and pictures of prison wardens through the ages. Empty corridors. Our escort led us to a flight of stairs, and up them to an unprepossessing looking door which she opened with a small key. She gestured us in. As I walked through the door it was like walking into a different world. Men all around, standing, staring. Some at nothing. Some at us. Some out of windows. Their body language was closed. Their eye contact limited and fleeting. Their movements nervous, strained, unfamiliar. Some were wiping down windows and floors, with an air of care bordering on the compulsive. Some were standing in groups, next to each other, staring. One or two attempted a wave, or a nod, of greeting. All were dressed in the prison uniform. White trainers, white T-Shirt, beige slacks. It was customisable to the extent that there was a beige collared shirt that could be worn on top of the T-shirt if cold. Those in just the T-shirt were pretty buff, and often covered in livid technicolor tattoos right up to the chin. One stern and practical looking woman served as guard in this unit. She took our names. We then rather coyly went to the room where we would be working and began to set up the stage.

As we were setting up the guys started to filter in. The front row filled first, and then row after row, with the back filling up last. We were nervous, and they were talking amongst themselves, their body language still quite closed. I was tentatively warming up, but not really wanting to make too much of a spectacle of myself. Once we filled up, the volunteer closed the door. There were still some people outside, watching through a window, curious. Extra chairs were carried in for them and once we were packed, Scott said we would start early. So we quite suddenly launched into the show. I was aware that my nerves were up. They didn’t last long.

The thing that was instantly evident in the room was the quality of attention. They were really listening, audibly listening. And they were unashamed to laugh when they thought something was even slightly funny. The next thing that became clear was the level of empathy. They were right on top of us, so it was easy to feel with them. And the changes and surprises were landing audibly, as were their opinions of the different characters. It very quickly became a revelation to us, having never done the play to an audience that doesn’t know the play and the company. The surprises, the twists and turns, the confusions, many things that we almost took for granted having known the play all our working lives, they really began to ping out for us because they pinged out for them. The show flew by. There were a couple of mistakes that were so enjoyed and supported by the crowd that they felt almost right. And we realised that we knew the show now, and began to have fun.

At the end they all stood to applaud, from the back to the front, like a wave. The questions afterwards were eager, curious, and to do with detail of character and craft and plot, rather than, as too often happens in theatre q&a, people showing off about what they know and not genuinely interested in getting an answer to anything really.

It was one of the most remarkably positive experiences of my working life. Most of them had never seen a play before, let alone a Shakespeare play. And despite the obsolescence of much of the language, the themes and motifs all landed on these initially intimidating looking people. It made me think about my prejudices, as much as it made me think of the things I take for granted. To quote the friar, “What we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it, but being lack’d and lost, why then we rack the value, then we find the virtue that possession could not show us whilst it was ours.”

As we walked back out of the prison into a warmer day, we all experienced a moment of knowledge that we were free. We could go wherever we wanted to. And the people we had shared that experience with could not. We all tasted our freedom fresh. And we all understood how truly lucky we are to be here, thousands of miles from home, travelling round this vast but welcoming country, and working with the words of a man who somehow cracked the fundamentals of the human condition, and had the eloquence to express them.

(By Al Barclay)