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FROM THE PUBLISHER, by Ernesto Burden
Last fall I was invited to a production of Yasmina Reza’s play “Art.” It’s a multi-award-winning comedy that features fast, funny, smart dialogue between three friends, one of whom has purchased a nearly blank white canvas for an exorbitant sum. The friends debate what makes art — an argument familiar to anyone who’s ever stood before a piece of modern art and wondered if they just don’t get it or if there’s nothing there to get. In the end though, the story is as much about friendship, relationships, and the need to be seen and understood as it is about art. I hadn’t seen it before, and as I watched it became one of my favorite plays ... ever. This outcome is neither because of nor despite the fact I saw the play performed at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men. It was a great play, well performed. The actors were participants in the Open Sky theater program, conceived of and taught by actor and director Derek Lucci. Our story on the program appears on page 14 of this issue of 603 Diversity. I was part of a group of interested community members and supporters invited to see the show. For some, it was their first step inside a prison. The gravity of the security, the weight of the sound of heavy bars clanking shut behind you as you pass through the various security points and the long walk across the yard to the prison gymnasium were revelatory. It’s not a space most people on the outside spend much, if any, time thinking about. But maybe they should. Because, in our criminal justice system, rehabilitation is part of the plan, and we expect that most people who are incarcerated will rejoin society at some point and lead decent, productive lives. Their lives will intersect with ours, and we hope they will be good neighbors as we hope we are good neighbors. Our approach to rehabilitation has a lot to do with whether this will be possible. Once in the gym, the audience was provided popcorn and drinks by prison residents and perused playbills created by other Open Sky participants. As familiar as that all felt, it was also impossible to ignore the guards patrolling the gym or the stern admonition we received to follow instructions throughout the proceedings. We weren’t to forget the gravity of the place. And yet, on some level, we did. Because the neophyte actors, trained by Lucci, so powerfully inhabited their roles, knew the text so well, saw each other so deeply as they played their parts, that for many of us, the minimalist set, the gymnasium, the guards, the prison uniforms, all fell away and we were in the story with the characters. It would have rated a powerful, sensitive performance even by experienced performers. In the talkback we did with the cast by Zoom after the show, the actors described their profound experiences. By learning to inhabit these characters, they had to learn to know themselves in new ways. And they had to learn to authentically listen to and experience the world through the eyes of another person. One of the most crucial elements in the development of our humanity is that moment, or really a lifelong series of moments, where we become truly aware, perhaps walking along a big city sidewalk or stuck in an infinite-feeling traffic jam, that every one of these other people has the same complex inner life we do, the same hopes, fears and loves. To feel that can be mind-blowing. It’s the heart of empathy. Watching this program, for those of us invited in from outside the prison, was also an invitation to empathy — for people who have done terrible things but who nevertheless remain people. People who may forever be defined by, as one participant put it in the talkback, the “worst 30 seconds of my life,” and yet must strive toward a reconciliation with society beyond the prison walls. All of this underscores the power of art to teach us about ourselves, to create genuine empathy for others, reveal our common humanity, and makes a powerful case for including it in rehabilitation, education and, really, every facet of our lives. |