Admittedly I have read William Shakespeare’s, The Tempest this semester in no other than ENGL324, where the play was ingrained into my mind theme wise and plot wise. After reading and analyzing The Tempest with Professor Brock I understood the humor and really began to enjoy the play, as soon as I was able to surge past the language barrier that sometimes hinders my understanding when it comes to Shakespeare.
With that being said, I viewed The Tempest as a form of entertainment, until I watched Shakespeare Behind Bars, in which the play is used as a lesson plan for life. Personally, I find it impossible to be able to relate to any of Shakespeare’s characters. Maybe it is because I am not a love struck teenager who has fallen in love with my family’s enemy and that I am not a crazed power hungry King who is being influenced by his wife, but maybe I can consent to finding myself to be the beautiful, witty and vivacious Viola or maybe even that’s a stretch ( and mildly conceited) ? In other words, the excellent subjects that William Shakespeare has created for his audience are just characters who are entertaining me for the moment that I am watching or reading the play. I feel no connection to them unlike the prisoners in Shakespeare Behind Bars.
In the movie dissecting the role of each character is a huge step of their acting process. Like the warden said, education prepares his prisoners for the real world, but this program does so much more than just educate the men, as can be seen through Red’s performance in The Tempest and his on camera interviews. For me, Red’s experience was the most touching because he seemed to be thoroughly genuine when attempting to find a connection between himself, and the role of Miranda. It shocked me to find that Red could possibly find similarities between himself and a girl who was written in the sixteenth century. I myself, as a female found it impossible to make a connection between any of Shakespeare’s characters, but then again I am young, innocent and most likely naïve when it comes to life, unlike hardened criminals who we can assume have stripped life to its rawest form.
On the other hand, I do see all of the aspects of the Shakespeare Program at the Luther Lucket Correctional Complex. I realize that some of the men there use the program to pass the time without taking advantage of the therapeutic resource at their fingertips, but when taken advantage of Shakespeare Behind Bars is therapy and it is a way to occupy the prisoners, so that they cannot be involved in illicit activities in jail. I see this program like the many YMCA programs that reach out to their nearby communities, but in this case the program only extends to the Luther Lucket island and maybe some other penitentiaries if they go on tour like Broadway.
Your title made me think about what the inmates are really going through as they wait to be up to a parole hearing. It was evident that their participation in this play allowed them to reflect back on their wrongdoings and what they are still currently struggling with. I hope that they found their participation therapeutic, focusing on where their anger came/comes from and how to deal with it in the future. I found the last line of the play very inspiring, “As you from crimes would pardon'd be, Let your indulgence set me free.”
ReplyDeleteI also referenced Red's connection with his character Miranda. The similarities, even their ages at the time of questioning their parentage, was eerie.
ReplyDeleteI compared their sessions to group therapy, and it was hard to reconcile these seemingly mature, responsible individuals with the horrible crimes they committed.
Again, however, I have to question.....will it continue once they are on the outside, if they can get there.
While it's sort of odd that you relate more to convicted killers than to lovestruck teenagers (because who hasn't been the latter, am I right?), I do agree with the basic point you're making. My friend Eric, whose way better versed in Shakespeare than I am, once told me that Shakespeare was the first guy to realize that you didn't have to make your characters universal and representative of everything--rather, you could make them as specific as possible, as esoteric and weird as possible, and this would endear them to the audience. Which for some people might be the case, and for others (like yourself, and here and there when I've dabbled in Shakespeare myself) might not be.
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