Rehabilitation Through the Arts Director of Mice and Men
Groundwork
Rehabilitation through the Arts (RTA) is a non-profit organisation that runs arts programming in prisons with the goal of helping "develop social and cerebral skills that prisoners need for successful reintegration into the community." The system was imagined in 1996 when its founder, Katherine Vockins, went to a graduation ceremony for New York Theological Seminary in Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison house in Ossining, New York. She asked an inmate if there was a theatre program in the prison, and he said there was interest merely no program. A twelvemonth later, Katherine started what became RTA. Today, the organization regularly serves over 200 prisoners in New York State, providing inmates with opportunities to participate in theatre, poesy, dance, music, writing, and visual arts initiatives.
Charles Moore and Takia Parham are both alumni of Rehabilitation through the Arts. Charles served 17 years in prison—12 in Sing Sing and five in Woodbourne Correctional Facility—and Takia served five-and-a-half years in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Here, they share near their experiences with RTA, some of the challenges they faced when they were released from prison, and how our gild can exercise a better chore of welcoming formerly incarcerated people home.
On their experiences with Rehabilitation through the Arts
Charles
"I went to Sing Sing in 2000. RTA has been around Sing Sing since 1996. They have special events in prison. Sometimes they have a concert; sometimes they have plays and stuff like that. In 2001, they had a special issue, which was a play inside of Sing Sing's auditorium. They were doing A Few Skilful Men. They did an fantabulous job, and I went to run across it twice. The second nighttime I was walking around the facility and starting to meet people and I was like, 'That guy looks similar he was in the play last night. Then I started to run into more people. And then I was like, 'Why do all these people seem like they were in the play last night?'
I idea people from the outside came in. I hadn't known in that location was a theatre plan within the prison house. Then some of my friends that I began to get to know said, 'They have a programme in Sing Sing called RTA. Information technology's a theatre program. The guys that put the play on are prisoners. I was similar, 'Wow!' At starting time, I didn't retrieve annihilation of it. I just enjoyed it and went to some other productions.
I somewhen signed upward, and information technology took me ii years to get in. I got involved in 2003, my first production beingness Jitney past August Wilson. [I've done] Jitney, West Side Story, an original piece chosen N Give-and-take in which we took the word 'nigger' to trial. We did a lot of Shakespearean plays, Of Mice and Men, and The Silence of the Art.
I was involved in almost 12 productions. I don't consider myself an actor, so most of the fourth dimension, I would shy back to product managing director or stage manager-type roles. Only when duty calls, I will human activity. I acted in Starting Over; I acted in West Side Story; I acted in North Word.
The first play that I was in, going back to Jitney, my role was the telephone. If you lot know anything about the play Jitney, it's about a cab station. The cab station is revolved around the ringing of a telephone, because everyone is calling in for a motorcoach. So I was the person who would ring the phone on my keyboard. And lo and behold to me, cheers to the managing director…Dr. Joanna Chan was the director…She was a nun, an Asian nun, and she would sit down and casually talk to us almost it and make sure we understood the production. Then she asked this famous question one solar day. She said: 'What's the about important role in the play?'
And everyone would raise their hand and say, 'Becker, because I'm the male parent, and I'k the one who shows wisdom' and stuff…and then Timbo would enhance his hand. And she said:
No, everyone'southward of import, but the most important part of the play is the telephone, considering the telephone moves the play.
And that was me. Being in prison house for what I was in prison for, that was like the best thing I always heard. It made me experience like I was important over again. Then I went to rehearsal every day. I made certain I was there, and it was ane of those feelings that came to me because I was not seen. I wasn't on stage interim, just my presence was needed. It started to bring my humanity back to me."
Takia
"In 2013, I had been invited to see a operation. My friend Pamela Smart actually invited me to run across her perform in Amazing Grace. Information technology was a play that the inmates had put on theirselves that they had created themselves, based loosely upon their life experiences. And it was superb. I was so shocked that something similar that was being done in prison. I mean the quality of the actors' abilities, the story line, the fact that at that place were costumes. This presentation, it was squeamish. And I hadn't been to anything like that…I hadn't heard annihilation similar that in the ii years prior to that moment that I had been there.
And that invite…I was sitting in the second row, watching Astonishing Grace, watching my peers put on Amazing Grace. And it was through Rehabilitation through the Arts. And I said, I'1000 signing up for it. How come up you lot didn't tell me sooner?I didn't know that this is where you were going, and this is what you were doing.
But I had gravitated to the inmates who, not only did they have a longer amount of fourth dimension, they too demonstrated only a sure character themselves. Which, after the loss of my mother, I wanted to find out: How am I going to exercise the balance of this fourth dimension? Then I gravitated toward those who had already done 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. And had just a petty fleck to offer some insight as to how to do my time. And when I institute RTA, that was how I was going to do my time. In it, I likewise found therapy…which information technology'southward non a therapy program. But, I guess, a part of art itself is therapeutic. And and then with that, I connected from 2013 until the twenty-four hour period I left in RTA. And that'due south every course that was being given from theatre to verse to hip-hop dance, physical theatre, one-act. There were and so many different areas that yous could participate in, and it was a voluntary plan. Information technology wasn't a program that was mandated by the state, based off of your alleged crime, be information technology anger management or coin crimes where you lot have to take a financial mandatory program.
This was voluntary, then you had the selection of doing it and finding something in information technology…then I did.
[RTA] immune me to stop acting and to kickoff acting. And what I mean by that and that play on words is there's a posture you accept to have in that subculture of prison because there's always the threat of your torso being harmed, non only by your peers but besides by correctional officers and staff, be information technology a misunderstanding, a breathy issue of disrespect or harm or harassment, or merely just misunderstanding. They have a chore to exercise, and they do information technology with the utmost strength. They're not required to respect you, and you're not considered a human existence necessarily. The normal rights that one has nether the Constitution…you lose that. That doesn't stand when you are a convicted felon.
So, it gave me the opportunity to allow my pilus down in the sense of I don't have to walk around with a mean face or that those who are a potential threat to my trunk or my well-being or my peace of mind will think twice earlier they come to me to impairment me. I didn't have to posture whatsoever more. I could put on a new self through a graphic symbol or by exploring my emotions…they don't always accept to be negative. Those are things that happen to nigh people. To detect joy in the moment or to look at whatever issue where you have to be told every minute what to exercise—ten minutes is the max you lot have to be privately in your room, because there'southward a window in which officers will come up effectually every 30 minutes to check and see if not only are yous all right, but are you doing something yous're not supposed to? Mostly they come with the mental attitude of: What are you doing in there? Well, there'due south a toilet here, too, where I slumber, and then I may exist using that. And you don't accept the right to say, I'k going to brand a curtain and I'one thousand going to shut that area off, so y'all can't see me. It is a dual reason for that. And again, they take a job to practice. And that sense of dignity existence taken and stripped from the normal person. You lot effort to find something—annihilation—that will make you experience dignified and nonetheless have a sense of self and identity and esteem. And so, that'southward what RTA did.
And I say information technology was life-changing, because I carve to it. The two hours that I would get to learn something new—exist information technology someone's bringing in art that I had never heard of or artists I had never heard of in any theme or surface area of art. It was enough to say, I needed this break right at present, between the hours of 6 o'clock to ix o'clock, I needed this break. And that's what information technology did."
Source: http://www.phillipsjournalism.org/project-publications/2016/6/22/takia-parham-charles-moore-part-1-background-and-rehabilitation