Playing for Time Theatre Company: Perspectives from the Prison
250
Playing for Time Theatre Company: Perspectives from the Prison
250eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783209521 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect Books |
| Publication date: | 12/18/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 250 |
| File size: | 18 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Annie Mckean was a Senior Fellow in Knowledge Exchange at the University of Winchester lecturing in applied drama and theaterand drama in education. She was artistic director of Playing for Time Theatre Company, delivering theaterprojects in HMP Winchester, for over a decade.
Kate Massey-Chase is an AHRC-funded PhD student at the University of Exeter, researching how applied theater could support young people in the transition between child and adolescent and adult mental health services, and a visiting lecturer on the MA Applied Theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Kate Massey-Chase is an AHRC-funded Ph.D. student at the University of Exeter, researching how applied theatre could support young people in the transition between child and adolescent and adult mental health services. She is a visiting lecturer at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and previously ran the Theatre for Change module at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. She has also worked as a research consultant for the University of Wales, Trinity St David. In addition, she is a freelance creative arts practitioner, working across a range of educational and community settings. She has recently co-edited a book on prison theatre, Playing for Time Theatre Company: Perspectives from the Prison (Intellect, 2019).
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Transformation and Challenge in Insecure Worlds: The Arts in Secure Institutions
Annie McKean
This chapter examines how the arts, and theatre in particular, have something to offer those who find themselves serving a custodial sentence and explores the ways in which theatre can offer opportunities for self-reflexivity and potential change. Notions of transformation are central to the chapter but are highly contested and difficult to evidence (Nicholson 2005: 12). However, this chapter offers perspectives on change that are supported by comments made by prisoners who participated in the work. This is important as personal narratives are increasingly being seen as credible evidence in research contexts even though they do not fit the quantitative research paradigm (Maruna 2001). The chapter also examines the ways in which arts projects are mediated by the complex variables present when working in a secure environment. These include the barriers created by institutional power and the politics of punishment. In addition to discussing the ways in which the arts can enable prisoners to transcend the difficulties they face, the ways in which their backgrounds can inhibit full participation in the work are also considered. Finally, the challenge of evaluating the efficacy of this kind of work is framed within the context of problems that prisoners face upon release.
Dancing between the shards
In 2006, Playing for Time Theatre Company staged a production of Joan Littlewood's music theatre piece, Oh What a Lovely War. I had many dreams after the project was over. The most striking and final dream was one in which the production team, students and prisoners were in a black box studio. We were all wearing black tops and trousers and had bare feet. The floor was lit from above. Covering the floor, with spaces in between, were large chunks of broken coloured glass with razor sharp edges, the kind of glass that Victorian bottles were made from. The lights from above coloured and refracted the glass creating splinters and shafts of light. We were rehearsing a movement sequence that meant we had to step carefully between the pieces of glass so as not to cut our feet. The movement piece was beautiful and was rehearsed in complete silence: a state rarely achieved no matter how many times the director asked for it. This dream, rich with metaphors for our work and my feelings about the process, highlights the deep emotional resonances these projects can have.
For me, writing about eleven years of theatre work in one prison, this dream is important in its symbolism. I am reflecting on experiences that are often beautiful, uplifting and exhilarating but also fraught with contradictions and difficulty. The sense of precariousness and insecurity of working in a secure environment is ever-present. We are working with people whose lives are largely invisible to the rest of society and whose stories remain behind locked doors. Many of them are in prison because of lives characterised by social, cultural and economic deprivation and early childhood experiences. Some of them have histories of substance abuse and personality traits that make them seek thrills and excitement rather than routine and responsibility (Maruna 2001: 11). This is often the case for younger men in the prison population. Additionally, prisoners are likely to come from deprived areas with limited opportunities for employment. The people we have worked with, on the whole, had low levels of literacy and often had mental health issues. In 2012, a Ministry of Justice study analysed the backgrounds of a sample of 3,849 prisoners sentenced to short and long sentences. Of the prisoners sampled, 24 per cent had been in care at some point in their childhood, 29 per cent had experienced abuse, 41 per cent had observed domestic violence, 59 per cent of prisoners stated that they had regularly played truant from school and 60 per cent had been suspended or temporarily excluded or expelled. The study found that prisoners with these kinds of issues were more likely to be reconvicted than those without (Williams, Papadopoulou and Booth 2012: I–ii). However, a deficit model that is predicated on people's issues and problems does not do these participants justice; they have potential that can be unlocked by allowing them to engage in activities that enable them to perceive themselves differently and to find some kind of transcendence from their lived reality.
The arts and change
There is a vast body of research and literature that examines a variety of approaches to the vexed question of imprisonment and rehabilitation. During the time that I started to run drama workshops in HMP Winchester, key questions related to offender management were encompassed by concepts of what works and what does not work in terms of programmes designed to prevent reoffending (McGuire 2013). These included interventions framed within models of punishment – sometimes characterised as 'short, sharp shock' approaches to prison regimes, which were favoured by the Conservative Government in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. The 1990s saw a shift back to interventions that were focused on addressing individual's patterns of offending behaviour, including psychodynamic practices and behavioural and cognitive-behavioural treatment programmes (Hollin 2001: 3–15). Some cognitive-behavioural programmes utilise recognised drama methodologies such as role play and the enactment and critiquing of various scenarios. For example, Geese Theatre Company work in a number of contexts within the criminal justice system and deliver drama programmes that are focused on addressing patterns of offending behaviour. Their work is underpinned by social learning theory, cognitive-behavioural theory and role theory (Baim, Brookes and Mountford 2002).
The prison service in England and Wales currently delivers a number of cognitive skills training programmes, including one based on Reasoning and Rehabilitation (R&R), a Canadian programme developed in 1988 by Ross, Fabiano and Ewles (Palmer 2003: 159). One such programme is the Enhanced Thinking Skills (ETS) programme, which is targeted at medium risk, male and female, adult offenders (Palmer 2003: 164); this programme was delivered in HMP Winchester until quite recently. The cognitivebehavioural approach of the programme targets social-cognitive deficits and comprises twenty two-hour sessions. The Playing for Time model of practice and an ETS programme are worlds apart in their approaches; ETS focuses directly on prisoners' experiences of the criminal justice system and patterns of offending behaviour and addresses perceived deficits in social cognition. Our work does not start with a deficit model; it begins with an exploration of the individual and the group's strengths and abilities and aims to support, develop and extend these within the parameters of the project. However, the work will inevitably challenge deficits in prisoner behaviour and perception of their self and others because it is essential for the development of team and ensemble work that pro-social behaviour and values are encouraged.
Palmer, in an analysis of the ways in which cognitive-behavioural theory can be used as a framework to analyse criminal behaviour, suggests that there is evidence to suggest that people who offend are more likely than non-offenders to have a variety of social-cognitive deficits (2003: 17). These include:
• self-control/impulsivity;
• concrete vs. abstract reasoning;
• social perspective-taking and empathy;
• social problem-solving.
(2003: 18)
Instant, as opposed to delayed, gratification is linked to lack of self-control. It is difficult for prisoners who have not experienced drama before to comprehend why they are being asked to do what they have to do in order to achieve the end result. Gratification is necessarily delayed and prisoners have to overcome moments in the process where they cannot see the point of what they are being asked to do, even though activities are always framed within a rationale that is shared with them. Prisoners have to overcome the impulse to give up when things get difficult or when rehearsal processes are frustrating. In order to function effectively as a team they have to control feelings of anger and also learn to tolerate differences in others.
The understanding of narrative structures and characters' motivations in a play requires complex levels of abstract reasoning. Concrete thinking patterns are revealed when some prisoners are unable to create improvisations in which symbol, metaphor and non-naturalistic forms are explored. Instead, they devise action-orientated sequences that reference behaviours, often violent, which are close to their own experiences. Getting beneath the surface of actions and considering their cause and effect is important in terms of developing reflective thinking skills. Working within the context of a play allows prisoners to examine causal relationships; they are asked to consider why characters in a play behave as they do and the impact the behaviour has on others, and to contemplate other decisions they could have made and the possible outcomes. Additionally, being able to see situations and events from other people's points of view is central to an understanding of character and motivation. Empathy is important in social perspective-taking, and the analogy of 'putting ourselves in someone else's shoes' in order to see the world from a perspective different to our own is embodied by drama strategies such as 'hot-seating, which deepen exploration and understanding of the thoughts and feelings of a character in a play.
Drama is essentially a social activity, and social interaction is essential to the development of social perspective-taking. Interaction with the staff and student teams, coupled with analysis and engagement with themes and characters in plays, is fertile ground for explorations of self and others. Work in the arts provides a context where the prisoner can utilise their pre-existing skills and knowledge, for example, 'performing' in court, but redirect it to create a very different kind of experience. Theatre gives someone the chance to channel energy that has previously gone into anti-social/criminal activities into pro-social behaviour and pro-social activities.
The arts and identity
The lives of people serving custodial sentences are sometimes characterised by a lack of opportunities and experiences that might help them constantly review and revisit their construction of self. If these interactions are limited to a particular social group, such as those operating within a criminal subculture, then an individual's perspective on life will be necessarily shaped by those encounters. In a criminal context, people may see themselves in roles such as the 'thief' or the 'addict, but they also have other roles in life such as that of the 'good friend, 'loving parent' or 'supportive relative' (Maruna 2001: 89). It is possible that taking part in a play with high levels of achievement can be another role that a prisoner can append to their repertoire of roles; this being one with many positive and pro-social measures that can be internalised and revisited after the event.
Taking part in a play gives participants the opportunity to re-imagine a different kind of identity. In order to do this they have to believe in themselves and the characters they are playing in order for the audience to suspend their disbelief and invest in the fictitious world of the play. As Shailor comments, the opportunity to take part in theatre 'creates a dual consciousness: one is both oneself, and not oneself; a character, and not that character' (2011: 22). This consciousness could be experienced as liminal space: the space between performance and reality. Brazilian theatre practitioner, Augusto Boal, calls this space 'aesthetic space' (1995: 20-23) and refers to the concept of 'metaxis, which is discussed further in Chapter 6 by Massey-Chase. The founder of psychodrama, Albert Moreno, calls it 'the locus nascendi [...] the place of birth and re-birth' (Feldhendler in Schutzman and Cohen-Cruz 1994: 96). It is a therapeutic, transitional space in which dreams and fantasies can collide with reality, stimulating thoughts about different possibilities: a space between the subjective and the objective experience, between the real and the imaginary.
In 2011, Prisoner L. commented on the process of taking on a role and playing a character:
I've been cast as Danny Frowst and I can relate to him because he's got conflicts, you know. It's about doing right from wrong and as a prisoner that's something you can really relate to, so I saw a lot of similarities there … it's an achievement, not everyone in jail can sort of get, you know. I came to jail and didn't expect to achieve much but it helps you explore aspects of yourself perhaps you didn't know existed and just sort of discover the talent I didn't even know I had.
(Jones and Manley 2011)
He was clearly aware of being himself and of not being himself. The process of taking on a role and playing a character, of being oneself and not being oneself, of playing with multiple identities, creates opportunities for reflection and evaluation. Prisoners can discuss how like or unlike the character they are playing they are. They can critique the choices and motivation of the character in terms of what they think they might do themselves in that situation. Theatre develops and nurtures self-awareness and allows participants to reflect on what makes them human and what they have in common with others (Shailor 2011: 22).
Working in the arts, like a number of activities undertaken in prisons, gives people an emotional and experiential escape from the constraints of life in a secure institution. A theatre project offers participants a safe place to engage in work, which can give them temporary respite from the routine of the prison regime. This kind of experience can transcend the constraints of prisoners' backgrounds, such as cultural and generational differences, and their history. Through undertaking the work they can find freedom – in the present moment, in artistic expression, creativity and self-discovery. Prisoners can gain a sense of renewed hope in themselves and their future. When interviewed by the Resettlement Team (Tribal) in the prison in 2011, members of the Soul Traders (Glassborow 2011) cast said that they greatly enjoyed the experience and articulated important indicators of personal development and change. They all felt they had gained confidence, found courage they didn't know they possessed, discovered skills they didn't know they had and learnt a great deal about themselves. They seemed to like themselves more; this strong sense of change should not be underestimated or undervalued.
The experience of taking part in a theatre project also allows a prisoner to see that other opportunities might be open to them. Prisoners answering the question 'what do you think will remain with you in the future?' in 2011 said that it was the realisation that they could achieve more than they ever thought possible. They also said that they felt they were more capable of trying out new experiences having undertaken something that they might otherwise never have done before. Taking part in theatre work can encourage participants to cross boundaries that constrain and limit the ways in which they construct their sense of self and identity. In the same feedback session a prisoner said:
I did a bit of scripting. Didn't know I could do that, it made me really proud.
(Anon., Tribal feedback session 2011)
When reflecting on the work, prisoners often say that taking part took them out of their comfort zone; they then go on to say that they would never have done anything like this on the outside. They do not necessarily want to carry on taking part in plays, but they are able to make the connection that success achieved on a theatre project can give them the impetus to try out new and different things upon release. However, as Thompson points out, this is only possible if the society prisoners are returned to can 'accept them and build new networks for them' (2003: 101).
Institutional power
The act of staging a play in a prison is an action that in itself disrupts the sense of a contained, controlled environment by opening up a rich, creative space within an institution that is paradoxically both rigid and yet highly transitional for those who occupy it. For the duration of five performances over three days, prisoners become subjects rather than objects within the system. For 70 minutes, the prison gym becomes a space where the prisoners are in charge and in control. The success of each performance rests entirely in their hands once the house lights have gone down. Power and control is handed over to them instead of being in the hands of the officers and managers who run that institution. Vinnie, who was in two Playing for Time productions, reflected on this process saying:
When people put their confidence in you and give you that responsibility I think we all proved we can rise to the occasion and as daunting as it is, it's just a matter of keep slogging away at things.
(Jones and Manley 2008)
Prisoners are contained, observed, categorised and restricted in numerous ways and struggle to maintain a sense of self and identity whilst dealing with regimes that are often dehumanising and disempowering. Once they are incarcerated, they experience disempowerment through a loss of autonomy and the ability to make decisions. Women are particularly affected by the loss of personal freedom and responsibility. For example, women who have previously had multiple responsibilities, such as home, childcare and work, are immediately deprived of the ability to make key decisions in these areas.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Playing for Time Theatre Company"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Intellect Ltd.
Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Selina Busby
Introduction
Annie McKean with Kate Massey-Chase
Chapter 1: Transformation and Challenge in Insecure Worlds: The Arts in Secure Institutions
Annie McKean
Chapter 2: Playing for Time Theatre Company: A Model of Practice
Annie McKean
Chapter 3: Playing for Time in ‘The Dolls’ House’: Issues of Community and Collaboration in the Devising of Theatre in a Women’s Prison
Annie McKean
Chapter 4: The Carlisle Memorial Refuge, Winchester 1868–81: ‘That Most Difficult of All Social Questions’ – A Nineteenth-Century Approach to the Rehabilitation of Women Prisoners
Pat Thompson
Chapter 5: Stage Fright: What’s so Scary about Dressing Up?
Brian Woolland
Chapter 6: Telling the Self or Performing Another: The Exploration of Identity through Storytelling, Role and Analogy in West Hill, HMP Winchester
Kate Massey-Chase
Chapter 7: Lessons from the Prison: The Space between Two Worlds
Annie McKean
Chapter 8: Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker: Creating Liberatory Spaces? Reflections on Process and Performance
Marianne Sharp
Chapter 9: The Drama of Change: A Comparative Study of University Students’ and Prisoners’ Dispositional Empathy, Need for Closure and Future Possible Selves
Ann Henry
Chapter 10: Exit Stage Left: Conversation, Creative Writing and Coping with Loss: An Introduction to Scott’s Diary
Kass Boucher
Chapter 11: From the Fishbowl to the Sea: A Nine-Week Journey
Scott
Chapter 12: Over the Wall Theatre Company
Fiona Mackie
Postscript
Notes on Contributors
Index