THEATER REHABILITATES
SING SING INMATES

he men of Sing Sing Correctional Facility recently gave three emotionally powerful performances of Reality in Motion, a play produced under the auspices of the not-for-profit organization, Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA).

In an interview, Brent Buell (RTA’s civilian director) explained that Reality in Motion is essentially a morality play, like the ones performed all over Europe during the 1600s, where persons are drawn by Satan into waywardness, then have an epiphany and reform. The play was written in 1997 by inmates Frank Rivera, Dewey Bozella, Vince Warren, and David Wayne Britton, with poetry by Robert Sanchez. It was updated this year by Mr. Britton who was also co-director.

"It’s a terrific story," Buell said. "Shorty King (Vaughn Gilmore), is a young man who becomes involved in gang life and ruthlessly works his way to fortune by selling drugs for the mob. In the process, he destroys everything he has cared for—his friends, his wife (civilian actress, Amina Henry), his child, and his health—and decides to end his life. Tony Tee (Jerry Ciari), the mobster Shorty has worked for, has a near-death experience in which he sees the error of his ways. Through Tony’s influence, Shorty decides not to kill himself, but instead to try and educate young people to make better choices in life."

Buell laughed and said, "When our group first started rehearsing it, I really wondered how this would work in front of an audience of inmates. I had no worry about the action scenes--I knew they would like those--but when it came to scenes about meeting a heavenly judge, people beginning to reform, and ideas of goodness and wrong doing, righteousness and redemption, I really wasn't sure how it was going to fly."

He said he was quite concerned about Shorty's final soliloquy—a long prayer in which he first blames God for his situation, and then sees that he must take responsibility for his own actions. "I thought someone might call out something funny or that people might think it was corny in some way and start laughing. But I felt criticized for having doubted," Buell confided. "Every night it was amazing. The inmate audience didn't miss a beat. They were completely into it. In those last scenes, that house was so silent you could practically hear the tears dropping."

Buell explained that this was due to the good writing, and to the fact that all three nights Vaughn Gilmore as Shorty did a masterful job with the scenes that called for going from toughness to tenderness, crying to laughing, and back again. "He got to that relation of humor and tragedy that was needed, and the guys loved it. There's a spot where he’s about to kill himself with heroin, and he tells some junkies to get away from him. They start to leave and then he says 'Wait a minute. Why don't you guys go and try and clean up your lives.' The audience went crazy, just clapping and cheering. That tells you something about the humanity of people on the inside."

ABOUT REHABILITATION THROUGH THE ARTS

RTA was founded six years ago by Katherine Vockins, a successful businesswoman living in Westchester, whose husband had begun to teach theology in Sing Sing. She came inside to see what her husband was doing and was so affected by what she saw that when some inmates said they wanted to start an acting workshop, she said, "Let's do it!" From a very modest beginning with six men and hardly any structure, RTA has grown to a program with nearly fifty men and a steady staff of volunteers. "Katherine Vockins is a miracle worker," stated Buell. "The men rightly trust her, because there’s no one who more believes in them and fights for their rights than she. She’s an inspiration to us all—the kind of person you’d like to be."

The purpose of RTA is to have men see that through studying drama and acting, many of the issues that resulted in their incarceration can be faced directly and indirectly. "In playing a role, they learn to become another person," Buell explained, "which is, for some of them, the first time they've really thought about another person as anywhere near real. Everybody, even if they're doing a short walk-on part, has to write a whole bio of the person they are enacting so they know who this person is. They write their character's life history--who his mother and father were, what fears and hopes he has, the whole thing."

He said that as men first come into the program their spirit of cooperation with other inmates is not the dominant thing. In prison a man has to watch his back all the time. "But," continued Buell, "RTA is a safe place. You can come here and be yourself. There is no such thing as trying something in a part and it being bad. It may not be right for the play, but it's not bad, you should try it, you should experiment and find out what you can do. Guys in our program really become a family—they are for each other, hoping every guy succeeds. It’s something you rarely find in theater on the outside."

Buell talked about the phenomenal success of RTA. "You're never going to have a person believe in themselves just by telling them they're wonderful, because they don't believe it themselves. But if they can see that they have really accomplished something that had a positive effect on other people--something they thought they couldn't do but found out they could do through art--talk about building self-esteem! They walk away as changed people. I’ve seen grown men cry when they realized they could have that kind of good power."

Buell continued, "I’ve watched people change in such dramatic ways over a short period of time—I’m talking about people who came in with reputations—and who now are people you’d be glad to have as your next-door neighbor." He concluded, "That’s why rehabilitation programs are so important and society should back them 100%. Someday, people in prison are going to be your next-door neighbors, people in your community. What would you prefer—someone who’s sat in prison and just gotten angrier, or someone who’s spent his years inside becoming a better person?"