+ Prison Program:

Rather than having a group of professional artists perform plays for a prison audience, our performances are developed and performed by an ensemble comprised mostly of incarcerated people. Facilitators are held in reserve as understudies, should casting change in the home stretch (as it often does, due to the environment in which we work). Directorial and design concepts are developed collectively by the ensemble; facilitators do their best to fulfill those visions with props and costumes. Set pieces are often built and/or provided by incarcerated people, with guidance and support from facility staff.

Our prison programming is extremely flexible in order to accomodate the needs of ensemble members and the facility. Our models include:

**Full Season: 40 Weeks **
The group meets twice each week for 2.5 hours per session. The season culiminates in a 90-minute performance of a Shakespeare play, with full costumes, props, set pieces, and music/sound effects.

Workshop: 14 Weeks
The group meets twice each week for 2.5 hours per session. The workshop culiminates in a 45-75-minute performance of a Shakespeare play with simple costume pieces, props, set pieces, and music/sound effects.

Intensive: Two Weeks
The group meets Monday-Friday for two weeks, with two 2.5-hour sessions each day. The intensive culminates in a performance of selections from a Shakespeare play.

Small Group: Flexible Timeline
6-10 participants read a Shakespeare play with SIP staff and choose monologues from the play to explore as actors. Performance is optional and at the discretion of the facility.

Nuts and Bolts
The group’s goals and timeline are established at the beginning of each season; however, due to the nature of prison work, it’s impossible to adhere to detailed lesson plans or rehearsal schedules. Instead, the group utilizes a long term plan (i.e., Phases I-III), and intermittent deadlines (i.e., once a scene is blocked, it’s memorized within one week). The arc of the 9-month process is typically:

• PHASE I: Months 1-2 — Read, discuss, and begin to explore the play on its feet. Build ensemble through theatre games and exercises.

• PHASE II: Months 3-4 — Read or walk through the play with new ensemble members, continuing to build ensemble and explore staging.

• PHASE III: Months 5-9 — Cast, rehearse, design, build, and perform the play.

+ Shakespeare Reclaimed: SIP's Post-Release Extension for Alumni

Shakespeare Reclaimed is a post-release extension that provides the mentorship, accountability, and opportunities for personal and professional growth that participants need to succeed as they return to their communities seeking productive activities and employment.

Participation is scalable and individually tailored—from simply keeping in touch with SIP staff to carefully designed, structured projects. Participants in Shakespeare Reclaimed have achieved many successes thus far; including:

• Full-time employment in a variety of fields (often supported by job references from SIP staff)

• One individual’s founding of a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization (a multi-year process supported by intensive mentoring from SIP staff)

• Conference and webinar presentations with SIP staff
• Journeyman partnerships with professional theatres and artists

For more information about Shakespeare Reclaimed, click here.

+ Program Documentation

We have not yet been able to take video of a full SIP ensemble performance, but we have been fortunate to have our work documented by some very talented photographers. We've also been featured in the media many times, including some stories that include video clips of ensemble members at work. We've been creating our own videos—informational and artistic—for the past few years, too. You can check all of that—and more!—out by clicking here.

+ Prison Program: During the Pandemic

Activity Packs
Though we couldn't work with incarcerated ensemble members in person from March 2020-December 2022, we found a way to sustain our connection by sending ensemble members Shakespeare-based activity packs to help alleviate their isolation, boredom, and fear—every two weeks for 100 weeks. Each activity pack consists of a piece of Shakespeare’s text and prompts for intellectual stimulation, creative expression, and self-reflection.

SIP alums who received activity packs and have since been paroled are enthusiastic about the project. The packs, they say, were fun and engaging. Simply receiving them in the mail reminded them that they were still part of the SIP ensemble—and that we on the outside had not forgotten them.

You can check out—and download!—our activity packs by clicking here.

+ 2016-17 Case Study: Narrative Identity Development

SIP staff conducted a case study during the 2016-17 season at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility to accurately and rigorously describe the actual work that goes on in the ensemble, rather than relying on downstream effects (such as recidivism) as the only measures of success. The study’s findings have provided the vocabulary and methods we now use to define and evaluate the program’s core outcome: the positive development of each participant’s narrative identity through a combination of theatrical and operational processes.

Narrative identity is how we interpret our past, define our present, and envision our future. Narrative identity development is the process by which we change our framing of these stories. In SIP, we are interested in moving from narratives of disempowerment to narratives of empowerment—from “I can’t” to “I can”; from “I’m not needed” to “I am necessary".

These stories usually change slowly, but sometimes they change suddenly. This is called a turning point. Turning points are moments or experiences that cause us to think differently about our past, present, and future—even to redefine them. By changing our stories, we change our selves.

To view or download the case study write-up, click here.

+ 2020 Follow-up Report: Self-Efficacy, Empathy, and Community

In the spring and summer of 2020, SIP staff conducted formal interviews with 11 formerly incarcerated alumnae focused on a series of questions about their narrative identities in terms of their past, present, and future selves. We found that the SIP experience has three long-lasting effects on its participants: enhanced self-efficacy, more fully developed empathy for oneself and others, and a positive sense of community. All of these traits are associated with positive outcomes in work and life, and all three are especially important for people who have been incarcerated, as they face substantial challenges in employment, housing, and community support upon return.

To view or download the follow-up report, click here.

+ Recidivism

Recidivism is a complex, problematic measure of success, particularly for arts programs, but we do track this statistic. We define “recidivism” simply as a person’s return to prison, without regard to the length of time since their release, and we regularly check each person's status through public records. As more SIP alumni have been paroled, we have noticed a trend: the longer and more deeply a person has been involved with Shakespeare in Prison, the less likely they are to return to prison.

As of August 2022, the recidivism rate for alumni of SIP (people who completed at least one season) is 11 percent. But looking only at the alumni who completed multiple seasons with the program, that rate falls to just 6.9 percent.

Furthermore, among the people who were involved for some period of time with the program (as little as two weeks, as long as several years of off-and-on membership), but who never completed a season, the recidivism rate is 18.1 percent. This is still well below the MDOC average of 23.6 percent, but nearly twice as high as the rate among people who completed multiple seasons.

We have long wondered how much SIP participants' low recidivism rate is due to self-selection (people who are less likely to recidivate choosing to join the program) and how much it is due to program involvement (people becoming less likely to recidivate because of program involvement). The above data doesn’t answer that question definitively, but it appears that people who choose to join SIP and stay for at least two weeks are about half as likely to recidivate as the MDOC population at large—it would be hard to attribute much of that difference to program involvement.

But the steep decline among people who completed a season suggests that sticking with Shakespeare in Prison makes people less likely to return to prison. And the further decline in recidivism among people who completed multiple seasons suggests that those benefits continue to accrue over years.

+ Philosophy

Every person is accepted in their totality.
Our past informs our present, but it doesn’t define it. Everyone is valued. Everyone has the ensemble's unwavering support.

Shakespeare is for everyone.
We interpret these plays through our own experiences. We value theatrical, literary, and cultural traditions, but our ensemble members' perspectives are more important.

"Empowerment" is not one-size-fits-all.
Theatre is the mechanism by which empowerment is accomplished; artistic quality is secondary to personal growth. Challenges and goals are unique to each person; there is no one standard for "progress" or "success."

This is a safe space.
Theatre provides opportunities to take healthy risks in a safe space. Ensemble members build trust through games, text work, and collaboration.

This is an ensemble.
The SIP process is fully collaborative. All voices carry equal weight, which means that things sometimes move very slowly. The frustrating nature of collaboration is core to its value: it teaches us patience and the ability to welcome others’ ideas—and to speak our own.

+ Approach

The SIP approach attempts to avoid the pitfalls of “doing Shakespeare” with marginalized people by centering the program around the voices and experiences of our participants: specifically, by creating an environment in which ensemble members can empower themselves.

Shakespeare in Prison prioritizes process over results and personal empowerment over artistry; it is, very explicitly, neither a class nor a traditional rehearsal process. Facilitators are not “teachers” or “directors,” incarcerated ensemble members are not “students,” and we resist anything that enforces the norms (and power dynamics) of a classroom.

This non-hierarchical approach democratizes Shakespeare by giving participants complete ownership of the process, from interpreting the text to conceptualizing the performance. Facilitators are fundamentally unconcerned with our own views of Shakespeare and his plays; we are deeply concerned with our participants’ views of Shakespeare, his plays, and everything else. But we are most concerned with our participants’ personal growth—as defined and achieved by them.

+ Why Shakespeare?

Almost none of what is described above seems to have anything to do specifically with Shakespeare. It would be reasonable to ask whether our objectives could be met just as well (or better) by using some other type of text or some other format.

It is especially important to think about our chosen texts now, in the midst of a global movement to “decolonize” or “democratize” Shakespeare. No one who works with Shakespeare can claim ignorance of the material’s potential to perpetuate harmful cultural narratives, particularly when working in marginalized communities. Practitioners’ sensitivity when exploring the text with program participants is key.

We also believe that Shakespeare’s texts are uniquely suited to our approach. So perhaps the question is better put this way: Why Shakespeare—the SIP way?

We’ve never been satisfied with a facile response to that question, so we put it directly to our alums. Here's some of what they said:

Shakespeare's plays are open-ended.
“It’s so easy and it’s so natural to dig into yourself when you get into Shakespeare because there’s so many ways you can interpret these characters. And there’s so many avenues you can go down, especially when you’re working with other people who are also figuring out how many ways they can interpret these characters.”

Shakespeare's characters are "relatable."
“When we were reading through Iago and really diving into his character flaws, I felt a shift within myself that said: look at how everyone is reacting to him and what ugly things they say about him. Do you want to be that person anymore? Is that who you want to be? No.”

Shakespeare is challenging for practically everyone.
“It's one of those things that people think that they can’t do. And then they do it. And then they feel a sense of accomplishment.”

“Shakespeare seems impossible for some people. And once you conquer the impossible, you know that anything is possible.”