In the late 1960s, San Quentin prisoner Rick Cluchey wrote a play called, The Cage. After a successful run through out the country, it was made into WEEDS, the box office hit movie staring Nick Nolte.
Theater groups have produced plays within the prison system for decades. For example, in the 1980s, a full-fledged production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot was performed in San Quentin, sponsored by the Arts In Corrections program. In the mid-1980s Arts Coordinator Jim Carlson brought in a Swedish director, Jan Jonson, who trained prisoner actors involved in the AIC, including Spoon Jackson www.spoonjackson.com who played the pretentious “Pozzo.” Jonson produced the play under the auspices of Samuel Beckett himself from his home in France.
The play’s audience included San Quentin prisoners, as well as visitors brought into the prison from around the San Francisco Bay Area. The production was written and talked about internationally for years.
Today, the San Quentin Shakespeare group www.MarinShakespeare.org consists of 12 prisoner/performers. The program was started 10 years ago by Lesley Currier, co-director of the Marin Shakespeare Company, and is taught by Suraya Keating, a professional drama therapist.
Currier and Keating work as a team while directing the plays at San Quentin. Dr. Emily Sloanpace acts as the dramaturge for the Shakespeare productions at San Quentin, explaining the language, scenes, and logistics of the play to the group of performers.
San Quentin actor JulianGlenn Padgett played “Hamlet” last year and was “Shylock” in this year’s production of The Merchant of Venice. Reflecting on the experience, he said, “For me, acting opens doors to other worlds that are as imaginative as they are complex.”
