Prison theater programs promote incarcerated persons to explore traumas and to address them in the form of drama therapy.
Maura Tarnoff, an English lecturer at Santa Clara University, has been bringing students to San Quentin Rehabilitation Center to participate in Shakespeare workshops, according to Santa Clara University.
The benefits of these drama therapy programs have moved the participants [incarcerated] to forgive themselves for their crimes, and make amends to their victims, their families, and get a deep understanding of personal trauma, the report stated.
According to Tarnoff, the residents who have participated have developed a sense of self-worth. Many have dropped out of gangs, obtained higher education and have reestablished family ties.
“Drama therapy taught me to work with all different kinds of people. It helped me understand people’s emotions, the humanity in myself and of others, said San Quentin resident Jay Kim. It also helped me to interact with my community together with my scene partners.”
Shakespeare’s Hamlet has a positive effect post incarceration. Alumni recidivism rates have remained under five percent, compared to the average state rate of 83 percent.
The success of these drama therapy programs is due to how the Shakespeare Hamlet story relates, it is where an intellectual had found himself lost in a revenge tragedy and was lost as to what to do, stated the article.
With the support of formerly incarcerated participants, the drama programs have been so positive, they have expanded to 14 more California, added the story.
Tarnoff connects Shakespeare with real social issues, including mass incarceration. Shifting the prison model of punitive justice towards restorative justice and true rehabilitation.
It offers the characters of the drama program to take on some of humanity’s complicated emotions, providing a place to express them and address them with their peers, according to the story.
Elizabeth Arreola Aguilar, a lead scholar, joined her class with the Shakespeare workshop at SQRC this past January, and two residents’ participants acted out a scene related to keeping our emotions inside.
The scene consisted of one person sitting in the middle, around that person were other participants that represented different hidden emotions such as: happiness and sadness, while acting out those emotions, stated in the article.
The person in the middle sat there expressionless hiding these emotions, representing how we go through traumatic moments that may have happened without naming it. Through this scene, it was given a voice.
“What does it mean to use art to recognize somebody as human?” stated Tarnoff. “For me, the study of Shakespeare in these workshops creates the possibility for more of these moments to happen, but they are not enough, another act must follow.
