Notes on Prison Theater in Northern Uganda, Part 2

The second part of this three-part series describes the author’s return to Uganda to conduct a three-week prison theater workshop. Terrified that he is unprepared to conduct the kind of work he promised to do, and almost frozen by the complex ethical issues and cultural differences he faces, the author works through his process of wrestling with his own values as a facilitator, of seeking support from institutional insiders, and negotiating decisions of inclusion and exclusion. [Go to Part One]

As the airplane zips over Lake Victoria and descends toward the runway, I look out the window to see a dozen or so men in grey jumpsuits, laborers at the airport, hacking away at the grass that lines the asphalt. They bend at the waist and swing machetes back and forth, back and forth. They call the work slashing and it is a coveted job, as most jobs are here in Uganda. As we touch down and begin to roll toward the main building, the slashers pause and stare at the passing plane. They gaze in stillness, showing no expression on their faces. I look at them from a seat that is more comfortable than any I’ve ever sat upon during visits to friends’ homes in Uganda. I wonder what the slashers think as they watch the planes arrive and depart each day. Tourists and fellow Ugandans coming and going, jetting off to and arriving from worlds they can only imagine. What an inconceivable, unattainable luxury it must seem. What freedom…

When I touched down on this runway last December I never thought that I would be back so soon. In fact, I didn’t think I’d be back at all. It seemed at the time that my journey to Africa would be a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. But here I am again, this time feeling strangely burdened — and, frankly, afraid.

I am sitting in a local restaurant in the North District, awaiting the arrival of Michael, the Officer-in-Charge at North District Regional Prison. I’m drinking a Nile Special, one of Uganda’s popular beers. I tell myself I’m not drinking to calm my nerves, but that’s a lie. I’m nervous. I was nervous when I arrived in Kampala last week, and I’ve been nervous since arriving in North District a week ago. I’m back in Uganda to conduct a three-week prison theater workshop with inmates at the minimum-security remand center. Since no one at the prison had access to e-mail, it took months of back-and-forth letter writing to finalize the plan. I was excited to begin the work but now that I’m here, I’m not sure I know what I’m doing. I have the gnawing sense that I’m in over my head. Every insecurity rages inside me. What have I gotten myself into? How am I going to conduct this workshop? I am almost too afraid to think about it. Hardly any of the inmates speak English. How will I communicate? “I am not competent enough to pull this off,” I tell myself. “I made a mistake. I should back out.” For a minute last week I even entertained the ugly proposition of just avoiding the prison completely; no one would have ever known I was in town! I considered lying, hiding. “If I never do it,” I thought, “no one can ever prove I couldn’t have done it!”

As I sip my beer I know that my fears are not just grounded in neurosis; they are based on some genuine concerns. One concern is the language barrier. I’ve requested an inmate translator but I worry that he may not be fluent enough in English to convey my meaning fully to the participants. The deeper worry, however, is one of content and time. I’ve suggested to the administration that the workshop be geared toward addressing some of the issues the men are dealing with in the prison, and some of the societal factors that may have influenced the decisions that led to their arrest. This is the kind of work I’ve done in New York, the topics always coming from the inmate-actors themselves. When it was January, months from the start of a potential program, this model sounded reasonable. But now that I’m here, the possibility of building the kinds of trusting relationships with the inmates that would allow for the exploration of these complex issues seems far-fetched. Furthermore, what I suggested — especially my ill-considered use of the word “rehabilitation” — sounds more like drama therapy to me, a practice that I am not only unqualified to perform, but one that I have no interest in undertaking.

Drama therapy, in part, seeks to address particular issues for individuals through the use of drama forms. My work in applied theater looks to address similar issues but from a distance. Using fictional scenarios or themes generated from a composite of a number of stories, applied theater allows participants to choose their own level of engagement with the material. One can decide to keep an emotionally safe distance between them and the material. They can simply enjoy working and playing within the fictional narrative. On the other hand, a participant can choose to cross a mental and emotional threshold and start making connections between their personal situation and the imaginary world that they’ve helped to create. What worries me here is that the process of trying to collaboratively build those imaginary worlds in such a short amount of time seems difficult at best. I am anxious about working with a group of men whose language I don’t speak, whose crimes I don’t know, and whose history has been one of extreme violence and chaos as a result of the 20-year civil war — one that seems momentarily at rest, but which the local people fear could flare up at any moment. I’m hoping that this meeting with Michael will help to quell some of my fears. I need to get some specific information about the men and about what he thinks might be of value. If nothing else, I hope that creating a game plan with the chief administrator will at least provide some sort of logistical framework for the project. I need some sense of order to offset my feelings of being overwhelmed.

Michael arrives and asks if we can sit outside. The rain season is approaching and there is a slight drizzle falling, but I agree. He says he’s not hungry and orders a black coffee. It is good to see my friend but he seems sullen. He apologizes for being late and informs me that he’s just come from the hospital where his Uncle has died. He looks off into the grey sky and tells me that he had tried to leave the prison early to visit him today, but was unable. Now his mother's brother is dead. We sit in silence for a few minutes. The rain is soft but steady and the air is cool. I offer to reschedule the meeting but he smiles and says, “There is no need.” Death, he says, is a part of life. We must go on. Suddenly, Michael smiles broadly and says, “So you are back! Tell me what we are going to do in this prison!”

Michael laughs loudly and says, “No, You must tell me! You are the expert!” I know he is joking and I feel immediately at ease. Over our beer and coffee, the conversation with Michael begins to help me feel better about the whole project. He is my friend I feel I can be honest with him. I am reminded of the importance of being in rapport with the person who in America we would call, “the gatekeeper.” This is the guard at the castle gate. This is the person who may or may not have a lot of power within the hierarchy of the particular community or organization, but who holds much or all of the power when it comes to an outsider's ability to gain access to the community or organization. In this case, Michael has power on both levels and I feel lucky that he is so receptive to the project and open to discussing its complexities.

We begin with a discussion about the crimes the men are in for. Most of the men, I discover, have been brought up on charges of “defilement.” Basically, this is what we in the U.S. would call sexual molestation or assault. This information throws me off. I had assumed, since this was a minimum-security facility, that most of the crimes would have been petty, such as theft or vagrancy. I had even thought that there could be people locked up for nonsexual assault and violence, but I had not considered defilement. I’m not sure I would know how to address the issue through theater. Again, I’m not a therapist, so I don’t know the psychosocial issues surrounding such a crime, but working with a group of perpetrators of sexual violence feels very different than working with men who’ve committed other crimes. Furthermore, there are thieves and vagrants in the group. There are men who committed acts of violence against others with whom they’d had land disputes (a huge problem in the north, where people returning from the war or from IDP camps have found their plot of land appropriated by neighbors or family members). So, it will be a mixed group. My sense of dread returns. I always make it a policy not to ask individual inmates about their particular crimes. Sometimes men have felt compelled to tell me, which is fine, but there is no need to know specific transgressions in order to do our work together. But in this instance, having offered to conduct a program that was somehow “rehabilitative,” I felt unsure of how to proceed.

My confusion grows when Michael starts explaining to me that he thinks there were actually a lot of men who were falsely accused of the crime. He says that often a girl’s family uses the defilement charge to extort money from a man. The family of the girl asks for money and if the man doesn’t or can’t pay, the family goes to the police and accuses the man of defilement. Later, after my meeting with Michael, a local friend tells me that the courts require no proof of age. Many people don’t have any kind of birth record in Uganda anyway, so proving true age is usually impossible. Therefore, cases of defilement often come down to a he said/she said situation in which the courts usually side with the woman. I didn’t know if this was true, so I asked a Catholic nun who ran a school for young women, many of whom were impregnated by rebel soldiers after being abducted. The nun, a Ugandan woman whom I consider to be a friend, flew into a rage at my suggestion that some of the men might be innocent: “Those men should rot in that prison! It is true that they defile these young girls, and there are more of them out there than those! They don’t punish them enough.”

Everyone, it seems, has a bias. I don’t know what to think. What I do know is that I have no plan to talk specifically about defilement. Without any way to get a clear grasp of the situation, the last things I want to encourage are “skits” with an agenda. If the men need to create something around the idea of “injustice,” fine. But a definite way to ensure angering a prison administration is to incite feelings that might provoke hostility toward the system, or toward amongst the inmates themselves, especially when there isn’t adequate time to deal with the feelings that might surface. It is unfair to the prison and it is unfair to the men. If a facilitator knows that there won’t enough time to discuss and debrief after a performance or workshop, it is, in my opinion, unethical to ask the participants (or audience) to enter into such charged spaces. This feels especially true in a prison, where inmates often have no way to process such emotions. Such unstructured processing then takes the form of violence, either against oneself or against another.

Brushing aside my concerns about the crimes for a moment, I explain to Michael that I don’t want to impose my ideas on the men. Instead, I tell him, I want to find something in the local tradition through which I can explore some of the issues the men deal with in prison, but indirectly. This way, we will be moving more closely toward collaborative work rather than work that pretends at collaboration and democratic devising work, but which really practices a top-down method which can silence the voice of the community.

What Michael suggests is another powerful reminder of the importance of befriending the gatekeeper. It is amazing what hidden doors can be revealed when one is able to have honest and meaningful discussion with an institutional (and in this case, cultural) insider. Michael tells me that there is a semi-retired university professor teaching part-time at the local college branch of Makerere University, the country’s premier institute of higher learning. His name is Dr. Ocitti and he is one of the leading scholars on indigenous forms of education and oral storytelling tradition among the Acholi tribe of Northern Uganda. I’m a bit amazed that Michael knows this. “Go see him,” he says. “I’m sure he can give you a lot of ideas if you’re looking for folktales or stories of the Acholi.”

This is perfect! This is like striking gold; it’s exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, even though I couldn’t exactly articulate what it was before I stumbled upon it. Michael offers one final thought before we depart. He says that there was a very famous local author named Okot P’Bitek, who wrote a book called “Song of Lawino.” He suggests I read it. I thank Michael profusely and we make plans to begin the program the following week. We decide that I will work with the men for three hours a day, from 9 a.m. until noon, Monday through Friday. I am required to stop at noon because there is a “count” then — a time in which the inmates have to return to their cells so that the guards can take a head count to ensure that no one has gone missing. As we take our leave, we both acknowledge the work we have before us: Michael is to announce the program to the inmates and organize an informational and introductory meeting that I’ll conduct on Monday. I am to travel out to the college and track down Dr. Ocitti. I am hopeful that he is around and that he’ll offer some more guidance. I also need to go to one of the local bookshops and try to find an English translation of “Lawino.”

I had been to the college once before. A local friend had shown me around when I was here in December. I think I know where it is so I decide to walk rather than spend money on a bodha (moped taxi). It is 8:30 a.m. on Friday and the sun is fierce today. The red dirt road is dry and I am coated in fine layers of dust each time a car passes. It is not long before I am sweating. The walk is longer than I thought – maybe five miles down roads I’ve not been on before. As I get further from the center of town, I become more of a curiosity. I am a 6’3” skinny White man dripping with sweat. I’ve yet to see a local sweating, no matter how hot I think the day is. My Ugandan friends laugh at me when they see my moist brow. “You’re sweating!” they cry as if they’d never seen such a thing before. To them, it is the cool season now. Perhaps it is cooler than when I was here last winter, but 88 degrees in June feels just as hot as 100 degrees did in January. So, I endure the stares of the adults and the giggles of the children as I trudge toward the school.

Everyone is friendly and I feel safe, except for the rare occasion when a teenage bodha bodha (moped taxi driver) eyes me in silence from the seat of his moped. This can scare me at times. I’ve been told that many of the bodha bodhas are former soldiers who are trying to integrate back into the community. Some look angry, even hostile. It is so important to remember how many of the people here are traumatized. They are exceedingly friendly and generous. They are kind. They seem genuinely excited to talk to the many bazungu (white people) who work or volunteer for one of the many non-governmental relief organizations. But the fact remains that they have endured a brutal civil war for two decades. Before that they were killed or made to kill by order of one of the two dictators, Obote and Amin, who ruled Uganda in the 20 years before the war began. Despite the tranquil façade, I am walking in a war zone. And I remember that when I enter the prison, that it is part of the context there, too. That is another reason why I feel “in over my head.” I hope that Dr. Ocitti will help me. If not, I have to re-think my emerging plan.

As I slowly make my way out to the college, I think about “Song of Lawino.”I bought and read the book the day before. What a wonderful story. It is really an epic poem rather than a book, and it is incredibly rich and evocative. And it contains a theme that I think could be explored during the workshop. “Lawino”tells the story of an Acholi woman who watches her once-loving husband become increasingly drawn to the ways and customs of the White man. He discards his traditional robes and mocks the tribal dances of his people. He falls in love with another woman, another Acholi who is infatuated with modernity and the ways of the West. Lawino’s “song” is a plea to her husband, Ocol, to remember himself and his heritage, to see the value and strength in the history and culture of his tribe. It is a powerful and moving account, and I can see why the book made such an impact in Uganda. In fact, it was one of the most popular books throughout Africa at the time of its first printing in the late ‘60s.

For better and for worse, Africa has dealt with the White man for centuries. Beginning in the mid-19th century, the English started consolidating power, undermining local kabakas (kings), and eventually making the territories that we now call Uganda a colony of the Royal Crown of England. It is significant to note that these territories, before colonization, had little if any commonalities. Some neighboring territories traded with one another, but for the most part the tribes were separate, the languages were different, and many had antagonistic if not hostile relations with one another. Britain continued to expand its influence outward from its original position in Kampala in order to thwart any potential hostilities from neighboring regions. Eventually they had patched together a quilt-like country called Uganda. But the hostilities and differences didn’t magically disappear simply because the White man decided that there was now a nation called Uganda. The hostilities remained and remain even today. It is quite common to hear people in Kampala and in the southern part of the country speak derisively of the “savages” in the north. And the history of distrust and dislike continues even among neighboring northern tribes like the Acholi and Lango.

Colonization: another piece of context that I need to contend with. Another reason not to impose my ideas of what “good theater” practice is. Another reason to find ways to integrate traditional, Acholi forms with the kind of work I want to do. My way — the Western way — is not better. It is different, having grown in a different culture and along a different trajectory. I think about “Lawino”and wonder if we could explore this idea of culture, of losing culture, of taking on aspects of Western culture — something that is very much in evidence here in the form of radios at the market blaring American hip-hop; in the form of Western fashion; and in the form of the words of so many who are certain than America is “better” than Uganda, and who say that their greatest dream is to leave their home and go to live there.

I am thinking about “Lawino” as I knock on the door of Professor Ocitti’s office. The ”yes” I hear from inside is deep in tone and soft in volume. I open the door and see an old man seated behind his desk, writing. His white hair is thin and I can see the top of his brown, balding head. In fact, I have the opportunity to look at this brown and balding head for some time because the man doesn’t look up when I enter but continues writing.
“Dr. Ocitti?”

He doesn’t respond so I stand awkwardly in the doorway and wait. I am dripping with sweat and I wipe my forehead with some of the coarse paper towels that I grabbed from the bathroom before I knocked on the door. It’s no use. It’s humid. I surrender to the fact that when Ocitti looks up, he’s going to come face to face with six feet of dishevelment. So it goes. After what seems an interminable wait, Dr. Ocitti looks up. “How can I help you?” He seems a bit impatient. He looks to be about 70 years old. His face is a light brown color and his large brown eyes seem enormous in the magnification of his black, thick-framed, coke-bottle-bottom eyeglasses. He wears a traditional Nigerian blouse – a long, brilliantly colorful piece that opens in a long V at the neck. I smile and offer my damp hand to him for shaking. Then I proceed to explain my project at the prison and how I had come to know about him…

Perhaps there will be a day, after I have taught for many years, after my work has had some notice and then been forgotten or relegated to the memorial dustbin of interesting old studies — perhaps then I will smile the way that Ocitti is smiling now. His is a shy smile that says, “You know me.” It is a hopeful smile, a thankful smile, a smile that says, “You are from far away but somehow you have heard of my work.” Ocitti and I are friends now. He offers me a seat. He offers me water. He asks me to explain again what I am doing and how he can be of use. Over the next hour or so, Dr. Ocitti opens his books to me, and shares his knowledge about the storytelling tradition of the Acholi. He explains the ways that proverbs and folktales have been used for generations to impart moral values and tribal customs to the younger generations. Sadly, he says, many of those traditions have fallen by the wayside with the emergence of Western values and because of the effects of the postcolonial instability throughout the country. I mention “Lawino” and my idea to explore some of the issues described therein. But Ocitti seems not to have heard me. I decide to go into more detail about using “Lawino” and one of the central metaphors in the book as a point of departure to explore current issues in the lives of the Acholi. From his desk, he looks out the window, gazing down into the green valley of the North District. “Yes,” Ocitti says after a pause. “The author of that book, P’Bitek, was my primary-school teacher.” The professor is not interested in my ideas right now; he is wandering around in the past, remembering roads long-since forgotten…

My head is flooded with ideas as I make my way back to town. I am armed with several pages of photocopies from Ocitti’s books. The pages are filled with proverbs and one or two folktales. I’m not sure if or how I might use the proverbs. They are simple sayings like, “Even the hardest shield will be pierced by the hot iron.” I wonder if there are various layers of meaning in the sayings. I wonder if part of our work could have men embodying these saying in physical images and then allowing the others to interpret or guess at the proverb.

The folktales are compelling to me. Each story tells the tale of different animal characters who find themselves in various situations that, when resolved, point to some didactic or moralistic lesson. The stories are analogous to Western stories like “The Three Little Pigs” or “The Tortoise and the Hare.” I wonder how many of the men know these stories. Ocitti’s book says that the tales were traditionally told around the home or courtyard fire, called a wang-O. The storyteller would sit by the fire and tell the story but allow the moral to remain unspoken, leaving the listeners to work out the meaning for themselves. This is interesting to me. Perhaps there is a way to play with these stories, to find stories that have particular morals or lessons that have some resonance with the men or with their crimes or with some of the societal pressures they’ve dealt with. This way, I am only facilitating a process of exploration, but allowing the participants to use familiar stories and lessons to engage in that process. They can choose the stories, and they can choose which lessons seem appropriate to them. The program is voluntary, and I guess that from the point of view of Michael and the administration it would qualify as rehabilitative. The inmates, once we begin our work, can choose whether or not that sounds interesting to them. Ethically, this feels much better to me. Any movement toward dealing with specific crimes will be made, if at all, by the men. And I can honestly tell the administration that the work is rehabilitative in the sense that we are using cultural touchstones to engage in dialogue about morality and values — not as imposed by an outside authority but as passed down through the generations of their own people, and interpreted by the participants themselves. The familiar but fictitious framework allows for different levels of engagement and reflection for each of the participants. I rush back home and immediately start poring over the reading. We might actually create something meaningful here!

I am back in the courtyard where I witnessed the performance on New Year’s Day. Michael walks me to a small concrete structure in the center of the yard. I remember being told that this was a space that served both as a chapel and as a medical clinic. The space looks small. It is covered by a concrete roof but is only partially enclosed by a low wall, maybe waist-high, on all sides. I can see, even from a distance, a group of men standing in silence, watching Michael and me approach. I can see about 30 or 40 men. Maybe more. “O.K.,” I think. “That’s a lot of men. This is going to be a good challenge.” As we walk slowly toward the edifice, Michael confirms that I had said that 20 to 30 men would be the ideal number. But since I see that there are more in the yard, I tell him it’s okay to have some more. It depends on how many are interested in participating, I say. He looks a bit sheepish. “Well, truth be told, more have expressed interest than I had initially expected.” He doesn’t have time to say more, and actually doesn’t need to, because as we arrive at the building, it is clear that there are many more than 30 or 40 men.

Michael introduces me to Peter, the inmate who had served as translator and M.C. for the New Year’s Day performance. I greet him and tell him how glad I am that he’ll be translating for me. But I am distracted by what I see inside the structure. There are as many inmates sitting on the floor as I saw standing a moment ago. The heads of those sitting were below the wall so that I couldn’t see them from the yard. I smile and say, “Afoyo,” which means both “thank you” and “hello.” “Afoyo!” they reply, their passive faces breaking out unanimously in a wide smile. Michael is smiling, too. “See what I was saying? I told them that you only wanted 20 or 30 men. I did not expect such a group as this to come.” I do see what he was saying. I quickly try to think of a way to winnow the group to a more manageable size, but my thinking doesn’t go very far before I hear Sherry, my friend and mentor from my community theater days, laughing in my ear.

Flashback

Sherry Schnepp has been running a community theater in southern New Jersey, called Our Gang Players, since 1977. The little group gave me my first role on stage, as one of the pirates in “Peter Pan.” What started with a tiny band of ten local kids who were bored to tears during long, monotonous winters on the Jersey Shore, has grown into a troupe that today boasts over 300 members divided into several age groups. Having grown up as a young actor with the group, I was invited to assist Sherry with the directing chores when I was in my teens and early twenties. We used to butt heads constantly because Sherry would dutifully hold auditions each season and then proceed to accept every single kid that had shown up. It led to productions of “Peter Pan” with 18 lost boys and 23 pirates; “Snow White and the 70 Dwarves”; a “Wizard of Oz” that should have seen the impossibly large munchkin army storming the castle and reigning over Emerald City; and an “Oliver” that I ruefully said had as many pickpockets in its cast as did 19th-century London. Yet, despite my protestations that the cast would be too unwieldy, or too “unprofessional” looking, Sherry wouldn’t budge. She would instead smile, confident in the righteousness of her words, and say, “Kevin, you’re right.”

Now, the first time she said this to me, I stared at her blankly because I didn’t know where she was going with her argument. Later, when I had heard the argument several years running, I stared at her blankly because I did know where it was going. “You’re right,” she’d say. “How do you want to choose? I’ll tell you what. Go over there and pick the child who doesn’t have a right to be up there on stage. Go pick the child who ‘isn’t good enough’ to be allowed a place to express herself… to speak… to bask in the applause of her friends and family. And when you’ve chosen, you march over there and inform her and her parents of your decision.” Well, that shut me up quick, not only because I wasn’t prepared to break the heart of an eight-year-old girl, but also because Sherry was right: Who doesn’t have the right? And if community theater and community-based theater apes the cutthroat, competitive ethos of professional theater companies, then we’ve really lost something as a culture, haven’t we?

Sherry’s productions weren’t always able to maintain the very highest artistic qualities. Some of the singers were “tonally challenged”; some of the acting was — to put it politely — a bit wooden. The adult troupe’s rendition of “…Oz” saw the scarecrow lose his dentures mid-song and then manage to catch them mid-flight and stick them back in his mouth and keep singing without missing but a few beats. A children’s production of “Fiddler on Roof” boasted perhaps the largest Sabbath meal in the history of South Jersey. But despite the sometimes Guffman-esque qualities to things, Our Gang was an example of real community, warts and all. It was fun. It was meaningful to the participants. Everyone knew that their contributions were valuable and, more, needed. It was a place where people could feel they belonged and mattered. I firmly believe that Sherry’s philosophy about inclusive theater directly led to my decision to make the transition from a career as a performer and director to my career as a facilitator and educator within nonprofessionals settings.

And now here I am, surrounded by a huge group of Ugandan men, men who have been sent away from their communities. These are the men who are the lowest on the societal totem pole. These are the transgressors, the deviants, the criminals. I look at them and I see the same hopeful looks on their faces that I remember from the suburban children who auditioned for “Annie.” Just as those children wanted to be heard and seen so, too, do these men. In fact, I’ve developed a completely unscientific theory during my years working with inmates. The theory says that many prisoners are, in fact, those very same children who, years before, had been denied the opportunity to express themselves. They were silenced and made invisible. And, partly in response to that silencing, they made extreme decisions. They broke rules and laws. Consciously or unconsciously, something in them sought the recognition that they matter. And instead of giving them what they need, what might serve to heal deep wounding, society locked them away in institutions that increasingly tended to favor punishment over education or rehabilitation.

If we can look beyond the false binaries of “right and wrong,” “good and bad,” “victim and victimizer,” then perhaps we can offer some redemption to these women and (more often) men, finally giving them an opportunity to say what they’ve needed to say for these long years. And by turn, perhaps, there is even something in this act that could heal the larger culture. Because the truth is, most prisoners return to their homes, to their neighborhoods, to their (and our) communities. And if they continue to be denied the opportunity to be seen and to be heard while incarcerated, what hope do they have of returning to society in a way that is healthier and less destructive than when they left?

I look around to the throngs of men sitting and standing before me and I tell them that anyone who is interested is welcomed to participate. I explain a bit about what I think we might do over the course of the next three weeks and then I ask them to raise their hands if they want to start working with me the next morning at 9 a.m. Hands are raised and Michael and I proceed to count.

I take a deep breath. Maybe I’m making a mistake. Maybe it’s too much to expect to be able to facilitate a process for over 100 men, only a handful of whom speak any English. I don’t know. All I know is that, to me, they have the right. I am sure they have the right.

Somewhere in New Jersey, Sherry is smiling. I’m shaking my head, and I’m smiling, too.

Kevin M. Bott is a doctoral student in the Educational Theatre program at New York University where he is studying arts partnerships between academic institutions and the communities in which they are situated. He is particularly interested in theater as an educational and empowerment tool for individuals returning to mainstream society after having served time in prison. Bott is a volunteer with a New York-based nonprofit, Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), with which he has facilitated prison theater programs since 2006. He is also founder and lead facilitator of The Contact Project, a theater program housed in a New York City outpatient clinic serving formerly incarcerated and drug-dependent individuals.

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Notes on Prison Theater in Northern Uganda, Part 2

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