Shakespeare in Prison Director Sophia Esch joined Marie Osborne on Michigan Voices to discuss the impact of Shakespeare in Prison and its collaboration with Wayne State University’s production of Julius Caesar.

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Frannie Shepherd-Bates a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Today we’d like to introduce you to Frannie Shepherd-Bates.

Written and directed by Sarah Shourd, who was once held as a political prisoner in Iran, and with many of its cast and crew survivors of solitary confinement, “The Box” sheds light on a concerning corner of incarceration in the U.S.

“Honestly, at first, a guy like me would get teased doing something like that,” Gabriel Odlum, a returning citizen, says of performing in a Shakespeare in Prison program. “But it was empowering to know, regardless of where you’re at, that type of stuff is valued. Through it, we found out who we were, and what our strengths were.”