The newly adapted production of Romeo and Juliet conducted by Shakespeare Behind Bars is a whole new community-based version cast and produced by incarcerated adult communities and at-risk teens communities. Shakespeare Behind Bars, founded in 1995, is the original writing prison and non-profit program in the US, aiming for helping those who are incarcerated or at-risk to reintegrate into society successfully by offering them chances to learn and produce Shakespeare’s plays. With the engagement of Shakespeare’s play, adults and teens could learn some level of practical skills, and emotional and social intelligence to re-engage with the world after days of incarceration.
Re-staging Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare Behind Bars now embodies more contemporary values, because it is no longer simply re-presenting or replaying the classic which has long-lasting artistic and historical influences, but it contains a more realistic and educational meaning represented by this specific community. Simply retelling the same story only keeps the contemporary audience living in a literary genre. However, this new production is not a typical love story, but a theme of violence, showing the idea that “there must be another way:” the same plot could be dealt with a different choice. Those incarcerated people might be involved in crimes in their early life, some of them were even teenagers without a right consciousness concerning laws and social rules when they first made mistakes. As a normal audience, we always lack the perspective of people inside the high walls, and consider their “criminal” life only to be seen in a literary genre; so we can easily act out the scene “They fight, and Romeo kills Tybalt” because it is what the text writes. But for the community in prisons, it is suffering and torment for them to act again like this, doing harm to others even though it is not true in a play. Therefore, when they deal with the same scene, they have more urgent desires for an alternative choice than we do, dropping off the weapons and stopping “killing.” If life could be like a play, which can restart and repeat over and over again easily, their life would also have a second chance with the right choice – and they did so in the new Romeo and Juliet production. Even though this is reality and there is no “restart” button to press, the actors still try their best to warn and educate those at-risk teens and other people with their heavy life lessons in order to make a change. At the end of the play, we didn’t see the same bloody tragedy that William Shakespeare writes, but still, we see these actors scream out “Our story is the tragic tale of young Romeo, the violent society he lived in, and the terrible choice he chose to make … like Romeo, many of you (teens) live in a violent society and will someday face choices like Romeo’s. We just hope to help at-risk teenagers make less tragic choices … we hope people can learn from Romeo’s mistake, and from our own.”
“This allows us to look at our crimes and our decisions from a different perspective and allows us to learn that we have more options in life if only we would open ourselves to the possibility that we are more than we have come to believe we are.” – Actor in Romeo and Juliet
This play is not a delicate play with professional actors and backstage teams, or fancy costumes, staging, or props; it is just a group of normal people dressed in low-budget clothes or even their gray uniforms seeking a kind of self-meaning in the incarceration. Since Shakespeare Behind Bars is a non-profit but a donor-supported organization, the play is free, but your little donation means a lot of support for the actors. We deeply understand that some crimes and harms are never reversible, but life still needs to move on to a bright future with kindness and compassion. Undeniably, according to research, the rate of recidivism for habitual crimes is still high in society: 67% in the nation and 29.5% in Kentucky; so it is more important to correct mistakes than to be trapped in mistakes and it is more important to pick up the courage to face the mistake and head to the future for those in incarceration. Shakespeare Behind Bars program can effectively reduce the rate by allowing the prison community to be exposed to good, hope, and a new mission in life, since SBB still believes human beings are inherently good, just like what Ron Anthony Brown, an actor in SBB, says “ Men who are considered society’s worst have the courage to seek out humanity’s best. . .inside themselves,” and that’s the modern meaning of re-staging Romeo and Juliet.
“SBB performances can be addictive. We will get tired after so many performances and we will become like walking zombies at our respective workplaces, but when show time comes we will find that energy in our spirit or in our fellow SBB cast mates to tell the story once again. I have watched people who are physically sick enough to need medical attention fight through the pain or discomfort. I have seen people who have had devastating losses in their family face their own pain to preserve the integrity of the play. I have seen people have heated arguments earlier in the day and perform with a respect and professionalism that most think is foreign to this environment. We do it because we love each other. We love each other because we have learned to love ourselves. And we love ourselves be- cause someone we didn’t know chose to believe in us even when we did not believe in ourselves. For some of us that is the same person and for some it is not. Yet for all of us, it has changed our lives. So, what’s behind the scenes of an SBB production? Men who are considered society’s worst have the courage to seek out humanity’s best. . .inside themselves.” – Actor, Ron Anthony Brown