Stateville

Since early February, I have been co-teaching a theater and writing course at Stateville, a maximum-security prison located just outside Joliet, Illinois, through the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project. In this course, the dozen or so students explore voice, body, and spirit through many of the same exercises done with the teenaged ensemble at Albany Park Theater Project. During one session, students discussed the inability to create a visual and sonic record of the performance art they were creating. As one student said, “I wish we could camcord this.” Recording devices are not allowed in the prison. That same student then made the suggestion that each week a student ought to write down the events of the previous class to document not only the activities, but the impact it had on them and their peers. More than a journal entry, this writing would be the film, the photograph, the audio file, and the documentary they wished they had. These students do work and want the world to know it. Learn more about their work below in the words of students Devon Terrell and Darrell Fair: