Before opening the script for King Lear, we wanted to spend one final session exploring monologues and, more importantly, learning about the people who will make up this year’s ensemble.
After check-in, the ring, and a name game, we began our three questions ritual, asking:
- What brings you to Shakespeare?
- What do you hope to get out of this year?
- What is your gift to the group?
The answers filled most of our evening.
Some participants came because they had always wanted to act. Others wanted to try something new, meet people, build confidence, strengthen their writing, or simply have something meaningful to work toward. One participant described wanting “to be a part of something, have something to work toward, to get a sense of accomplishment, stay disciplined, and meet new people.”
For another, joining meant making a choice not to let fear win. She shared that she writes poetry and has always wanted to act but had been scared to try. This time, she told us, “I am not backing out.” She was committed to doing it fully and “to shoot for the stars.”
Another participant expressed a similar goal: “It would be easy for me to stay in my shell but I want to push myself.”
For returning members, the answers reflected what they had already discovered through the program. One participant originally joined after seeing her bunkie participate. Now, she returns because of the experience she found here. “It helped these 40 weeks go a lot faster than the first 40 weeks,” she explained, sharing that she has come to use the program as a kind of countdown through her sentence. This year, she hopes to find camaraderie and continue getting better at being part of a community of women.
Another participant reflected on just how much her relationship with performing has changed. She had always wanted to act, but anxiety once caused her to freeze onstage. Eventually, watching performers made her think, “I can do that.” Now, she said, “I am proud of myself because I actually got up and did it.” She described courage as one of the things that keeps her coming back and said she now has the confidence to imagine performing outside of prison.
An ensemble member immediately responded, “You did so great. I hope I can get like you.”
That exchange embodied exactly why we ask the third question.
The question isn’t simply, “What are you good at?” It is, “What is your gift to the group?” The answers included dedication, encouragement, memorization, writing, poetry, dramaturgy, active listening, showmanship, balance, music skills, humor, positivity, flexibility, and even “weird energy.”
That last gift sparked its own conversation. When one participant described bringing her “extra weird energy” to the ensemble, another clarified, “Weird doesn’t mean what you think it means, it means supernatural energy.” An ensemble member followed with, “In the south, we don’t hide our crazy. We put it on the front porch and give it a cocktail.”
The room was full of laughter.
But beneath the humor, participants kept returning to the idea of community.
One participant joined Shakespeare after first finding community elsewhere in the facility. She came to SIP because her friends were here, and this year she hopes “to find a place and community” and “a sense of belonging in this weird place.”
Another participant’s reason for joining came from someone who is no longer here. Her former bunkie, who passed away this year, had participated in SIP and encouraged her to join. When she eventually saw a performance herself, she knew she wanted to be part of it.
As she spoke, her answer became something larger than why she personally joined Shakespeare. She talked about what she hopes the younger women around her will discover: “Life is to be enjoyed.”
“I don’t care where I was, I had a good time,” she continued. “We won’t let them suppress us; we’ll get up on stage and show them that we’re a family.”
Then she turned that idea directly toward the ensemble: “Now that you’re in Shakespeare, we’re a family. And we might fight like a family, but at the end of the day we love each other.”
When asked what she hoped to get out of the year, her answer was about everyone else: “I want every woman in here to grow.”
And then came the line that seemed to capture so much of what people had spent the evening describing:
“When we’re in Shakespeare, we’re not in prison, we’re in Shakespeare.”
After everyone had shared, we returned to the monologues for our final night of exploration before beginning King Lear.
One ensemble member tried Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing. She admitted that she didn’t fully understand the speech and was “hoping to get some help from the group.” The group immediately gave it. Participants offered context and then encouraged her to try more “expression,” “attitude,” “anger,” and “passion.” When she performed it again, she could feel the difference: “It was different because it had more attitude and was less monotonous.”
Another participant took on Lear himself. Once we unpacked the circumstances – Lear calling upon a massive storm – she tried the speech again. This time, she transformed her nervous laughter into an unsettling, almost villainous laugh within the performance. The room erupted in snaps and cheers. She even threw her script.
“I could see the performance,” another member told her.
It became an opportunity to recognize that something a performer might initially see as an obstacle can become part of the performance. Instead of fighting her laughter, she used it.
Later, a participant performed Hamlet’s “To be or not to be.” She understood the weight of the speech and shared her own connection to its contemplation of suicide. “I identified with it during a tough time in my life,” she shared. Someone else reflected on the performance itself: “I liked the pauses. It was dramatic. It was like you were living in that time and these were your real thoughts.”
The evening’s final major exploration came through Emilia in Othello. When asked what she thought the monologue was about, one participant explained, “It’s about how the men put us down, put us on display, like trophy wives, and misuse their power.”
The discussion immediately became personal. “Men treat us like subspecies,” one participant said. Another added, “I dated someone like this.”
The group encouraged a participant who had been especially active in the conversation to try the speech herself. She did, bringing all of that connection into the words.
“It felt powerful,” she said afterward.
An ensemble member responded, “You were powerful.”
Another participant added, “Every woman should read this.”
That exchange felt like an appropriate conclusion to our weeks of monologue exploration. We have talked about objectives and context, verse and prose, character and language. But we have also watched ensemble members teach one another, challenge one another, celebrate each other’s risks, and recognize pieces of themselves in writing that is more than four centuries old.
Next week, we begin King Lear.
We will bring with us the poets, comedians, musicians, actors, encouragers, listeners, dramaturgs, writers, risk-takers, and self-proclaimed weirdos who identified their gifts in the circle tonight.
And together, we’ll find out what happens when all of those gifts become an ensemble.