process

Are we doing enough to correct – that is, to help those who have broken the laws of society learn how to better themselves and contribute towards our collective social contract?

OUR HISTORY

In 2019, Open Sky Founder Derek Lucci, with the full support of NHDOC Commissioner, Helen Hanks and John T. Broderick, Jr., Retired Chief Justice of the NH Supreme Court, launched the first Open Sky program at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men.

The initial plan was to start with a core group of four to six participants. Interested residents went through an interview process to ensure that those selected for the program were prepared to commit themselves to the rigorous physical, emotional and intellectual practice of traditional conservatory training. Ultimately, a group of 24 inmates were selected for the program.

Though programming was put on hold when the prison closed to outside visits and programs in April 2020, due to Covid restrictions, Open Sky became the first civilian led program brought back into operation by the NHDOC in June 2021.

While Covid protocols designed to minimize the spread of Covid between housing units within the prison have created challenges and have caused some aspects of the program to be scaled back or reimagined; the program remains robust and continues to find ways to grow into the post-Covid landscape.

Open Sky’s inaugural performance of Sam Shepard’s True West is scheduled for early Summer 2022.

THE PROCESS

Open Sky combines a strict arts discipline of study and practice that are focused on human behavior and its outcomes with aspects of cognitive behavioral therapeutic models.

Our program is grounded in the practice and process of Conservatory Style Actor Training which focuses elements of voice and speech training, movement and body awareness, text analysis, improvisation and the honing of receptive and expressive communication skills. These skills and disciplines are addressed through classwork, rehearsal, and community engagement through performances and talk-backs with facility general population. The transfer of skills across all areas of practice is integral to this process, offering powerful cognitive reinforcement and generalization of skills beyond the confines of the program.

We’ve watched closed off, silent men and women open and find their way forward with curiosity and wonder at how people behave and the possibility of expressing in time and space what they have observed in human behavior. They each, to a person, re-discover the play impulse through the discipline of acting. Participants soften towards one another and toward the human plight in general. They cultivate an empathy that triggers conversation that drives deeper into questions of human behavior.

Addressing Cognitive/Behavioral Issues

Cognitive/Behavior outcomes are addressed within the actor training process. This enables us to offer practical and safe space for participants to explore important concepts and practices. Examples include:

Who am i?

Self assessment is a fundamental tool of our program that allows participants to document who they are, who they have been and who they are becoming. Set against the activities of a disciplined study of acting- where the one thing you are not allowed to play is yourself – self understanding becomes a requirement for progress and is taken in stride by returning to and departing from that identity with firm and chosen control.

Adulting and Desistance

The adulting process begins with taking possession of one’s ability to choose and connects it to one’s willful action. In children this process is impulsive until they are trained to be able to see the field of behavioral options and then to choose action in line with an objective. This function is parallel to that of a trained adult actor. The training entails the ability to think objectively all of the time while also engaging in the created and constructed – seemingly impulsive response. An acting ensemble presents carefully crafted objectively considered human behavior in the guise of the impulsive. This takes enormous self control, active and sustained study, and patient collaboration. Children cannot do this. It is a strictly adult activity. Thus, adulting.

The Program

Conservatory style programming refers to training that is intense; based in practical, skills-based training; and is intended to prepare participants to enter a particular career or line of work. For Open Sky participants, that line of work is life beyond prison gates. The structure of the program includes three levels:

Level One: 4-5 hours/week

Using classical actor training focused on voice, movement, emotional awareness, active listening and team building, participants develop and exercise important individual and social skills related to mind/body connection, identifying impulses, engaging empathy, as well as creating and actively sustaining a space of emotional and physical safety for themselves and for each other.

Level 2: 9-10 hours/week

The skills learned in level one are put to practical application though the process of rehearsing and self-producing a play for public performance. Voice, movement and other acting skills continue to be addressed throughout the rehearsal process, further deepening participants' ability to generalize the skills they are learning and putting them to broad, practical use. This is where lessons become tools.

Level 3: up to 40 hours/week

In the weeks leading up to the public presentation of work, participants will build and inhabit the world they are creating together through the process of building sets, making costumes and dealing with other technical and administrative issues. The ability to work as a team and actively support each other (and accept support from others) is critical at this point in the process. In presenting work publicly, participants have the opportunity to introduce themselves to their community, and to themselves, in a new light. This is both an expressive and receptive experience.