Mothers beg their feuding sons to stop fighting.
Inmates dance with abandon.
King Crack rules like a white haired patriarch.
And throughout it all there’s an ominous refrain:
“You will eventually get killed.”
For an eighth year, From Prison to the Stage, brought the drama of life behind bars to the Kennedy Center.
Veteran director Betty May adapted and compiled the literary works of prisoners Don W. Johnson, Jevon Jackson, Clarence McCants, Stephen Knight, AD McCoy, Robert Michael Reagan, John Raley, Patricia Prewitt, Harlan Richards, Antonio Hart, David Perryman, Marc Estes, Robert Beau Meadows III, and Robert Graham, Jr to create the show.
The show was presented by Safe Streets Arts Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to offering rehabilitation to prison inmates through art and fostering communication between incarcerated persons and the public.
One of the featured pieces,“War on Us,” was written and performed by former inmate Perry Redd. It included a reeling hip-hop film and Redd, playing himself, professed the reality of a “new slavery through incarceration” in monologue and song as he reflected on his experiences of being imprisoned and later acquitted.
Other segments were written by currently incarcerated prisoners and performed by local actors Raoul Anderson, Lorena Berger, La Tasha Do’zia-Earley, Miriam Ferguson, Ed Higgins, Lauren Jackson, Jesse Milliner, Briana Ortiz, and John Raley. Throughout the poetry, monologues, and short scenes, the ensemble cast connected with the audience by using the entire auditorium, breaking the fourth wall to demonstrate that prison life is more than just a performance. It is a reality.
The Aug. 30 performances were showcased as part of the Kennedy Center’s 13th annual Page-to-Stage Festival, an event which includes readings, productions and works-in-progress by dozens of DC-area theater groups, free to the public.
“I scream because you actually have to ask me why I scream,” declared one performer, as part of a commentary on the atrocities of prison life. The audience responded with a resounding, soulful “mmm.” The house seemed to empathize with the performers throughout the show. In one striking play, Going Home by former inmate Marc Estes — author of Four Pieces For Power, a family coped with the return of an uncle incarcerated for 50 years, his feigned delusions, his genuine honesty and eventually, his death.
“You’ve given me my life back,” the uncle told his relations. They, in turn, realized, he had given them back theirs as well.
The program featured the blues guitar stylings of From Prison to Stage producer Dennis Sobin, a former city sex entrepreneur and mayoral candidate who, since his release more than a decade ago on a child pornography conviction, has dedicated himself to providing wider audiences for prisoners’ art.
Though many of the pieces explored the pain and despair of prison life, excerpts from former inmate Roach Brown’s piece “Laughing and Learning” struck a lighter note.
Brown said that for him, Christmas always marked the time of most change — good and bad so he is going forward with his life celebrating every day. “Every day is Christmas,” Brown told the audience.
May, the show’s director, called out in the audience for a real world inmate, Walter Lomax, who served 39 years in prison before being exonerated. Unable to make the performance, he did not answer her call. However, her gesture was intended to draw attention to how “rather than curling up in bitterness,” Lomax “dedicated himself to helping the people he left behind.” In the pursuit of justice in the face of incarceration, Lomax founded and continues to direct the Mandala Enterprise Corporation and The Maryland Restorative Justice Initiative (MRJI).
Although many of the sketches explored the oppression and pain experienced by inmates, From Prison to Stage concluded with a sliver of optimism.
“The future is in our hands.”
