In the spring of 2019, I was invited to a “Volunteer Recognition” lunch at the prison where I teach an acting class based in meditation; or did teach, before the pandemic. Our hosts for the lunch were men selected to represent all students enrolled in prison classes. They’d prepared the food and decorated tables in the gym where we gathered. Before sitting down to eat together, there was opportunity for mingling. I talked with the 4 men representing the arts organization I work for – they’d all been in my class — and then I entered into conversation with one of them (I’ll give him the name Jason) who told me he’d passed the parole review board and would be released in a couple months.
Jason is a medium-height, medium-build, physically fit, nice-looking, Latinx man with dark hair. In class, he was willing to share his feelings and could speak without sounding judgmental. He entered into breathing exercises, voice exercises, theatre games, monologs – all of it – with interest. In meditation practice, he came to sit attentively. Above all, as my assigned helper, he was helpful. Every class, before I arrived, he’d set my desk and chair in place, get the room arranged, and lay out markers for use on the white board. When I arrived, he’d give me a greeting with a smile and always wanted to bend my ear for a minute or two about something going on outside the prison — not in a bloviating sort of way, but excitedly — as if to keep in touch with life as he imagined it. Then he’d take attendance.
Over the course, Jason told me he was life-long close with his mother, she lived with her husband, and she bought a new car they all liked a lot – Jason liking it in his imagination.
A teacher doesn’t discuss with her incarcerated students the crime they committed or their sentence. I don’t ask what got someone into prison or what it’s like living behind bars and barbed wire, though the men may comment on the noise of prison, or the food, or a guard with a chip on his shoulder. But on “Volunteer Recognition” day (knowing I’d not see him again) I asked Jason about the journey he’d been on since being arrested: how he’d gone from convicted criminal to gracious theatre participant. In the 10 minutes given us, here’s what he let me know.
Jason was incarcerated at the age of 17. An unruly young man, he continued to misbehave in prison, resisting rules and getting into trouble. The first glimmer of a turn-around happened fairly early in his imprisonment, in a facility way upstate. A man from the outside (a clergyperson, if I rightly recall) had permission to come in and form a theatre group – doing some actor training and putting on plays. Jason joined the group and, to his surprise, not only liked making theatre – onstage and backstage — but was pretty good at it. That was the beginning of envisioning himself differently.
He was moved to a facility downstate. There, again, his behavior was disruptive. For stretches, he was put into solitary confinement. During one of the solitaries, his mother came to visit. He was brought to the visiting room, handcuffed, and seated before his mother. She looked at the handcuffs. All his life, she’d called him Jay. She looked at him and she said, “Jason, is this what you want?” He returned to solitary and considered her question. His answer was to stop breaking rules.
Jason explained, change is gradual. You take some classes, you embark on an education, you begin to feel better about yourself. He took classes, he got an education, and he joined the arts organization I work for at the downstate facility. He participated in plays and took a leadership role in getting the plays produced. He said, you get older, too, and that changes you, changes the things you’re inclined to do. But working on the plays, building something together with other people – that was for him the wake-up. The theatre and his mother’s question, these turned him in the direction of helpful.
Jason looked young to me, maybe 30, but I really didn’t know. I asked him his age. He said 39. He’d been in prison 22 years, all his young man years. He didn’t mention a girlfriend waiting on the outside. We all sat down to lunch.
Weeks later, I heard the plan for Jason was to go to his mother’s house and from there he’d have to find a job and eventually a place to call home. I thought, he’ll have to figure out how a man may enter society at the age of 40. Whatever Jason took from our time together in a theatre class in prison, may it benefit him in the world.