version: UK | USA | International

Performing New Lives

Performing New Lives

Prison Theatre

Jonathan Shailor
Foreword by Evelyn Ploumis-Devick

Paperback: £24.99 / $37.95

2010, 234mm x 156mm / 9.25in x 6in, 304pp
ISBN: 978-1-84905-823-0, BIC 2: MQTC JKVQ1

add to cart
  • description |
  • reviews |
  • contents |

'I picked up this book with mild interest. I quickly became gripped. It is directed at anyone interested in the role o the performing arts in criminal justice but I think it may have something valuable to say to many others working with people who, because of difficult circumstances, most often troubled beginnings, are struggling against the odds to make their way through life.'

- Human Givens Journal

'When Jonathan Shailor started producing Shakespeare's plays in prisons in Wisconsin, the media lit up with debates about whether our imprisoned neighbours had the right to act, to play, and to explore new lives and roles by inhabiting the words and worlds of the stage's great authors. In this stunning collection of essays, some of the nation's leading prison educators and activists offer startling, ennobling, and definitive answers to those questions: Yes prisoners can and should act, Yes they need to play just like the rest of us, and Yes they benefit tremendously from exploring new modes of being by studying and then embodying the words of great playwrights... Performing New Lives offers remarkable case studies of how theatre-in-prison can reduce recidivism and violence by raising consciousness - all while having a great time on the stage.'
 
- Stephen John Hartnett, Chair, Department of Communication, U.C. Denver, and editor of Challenging the Prison-Industrial Complex