The ThinkND Podcast
The ThinkND Podcast
Shakespeare & Possibility, Part 10: Pioneering the Shakespeare in Prisons Movement
Episode Topic: Pioneering the Shakespeare in Prisons Movement
Listen in to a conversation between prison theatre practitioner and activist Jean Trounstine and Mary Irene Ryan Family Executive Artistic Director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame Scott Jackson. Jean’s work at the MCI Framingham Prison for Women in Massachusetts during the 1980’s and 90’s represents perhaps the very first productions of Shakespeare staged by incarcerated women in the modern era. Her program became the focus of her first book, Shakespeare Behind Bars, an in-depth journey into both her experience as facilitator/director of the program and that of the core ensemble of women who explored the works of Shakespeare in the most nontraditional of environments. Jean’s work was to become the early inspiration for the larger Shakespeare in Prisons movement, a global cohort of practitioners that today encompasses programs in more than 30 U.S. states and 17 nations.
Shakespeare at Notre Dame, the founding organization of the Shakespeare in Prisons Network, is proud to feature the work of this inspirational visionary and, further, to serve as the permanent home of her legacy archive. Our partnership will ensure that her seminal work is accessible to future generations of scholars, researchers, and practitioners in perpetuity.
Featured Speakers:
- Scott Jackson, University of Notre Dame
- Jean Trounstine, professor, author, and activist
Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/8e0fd0.
This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Shakespeare & Possibility.
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Hello, I'm Scott Jackson. I serve as the Mary Irene Ryan Executive Artistic Director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame. And welcome to our partnership with ThinkND entitled Shakespeare Impossibility, a series that explores the field of applied Shakespeare, which brings Shakespeare to new communities all across the world in innovative ways that, brings the heart of these communities in dialogue with these extant works that have been with us for four and 500 years. Today, it is my great honor to bring to you Jean Traunstein. Jean is the first person to bring Shakespeare production into the carceral system. And by way of introduction, I'm gonna read a bio here about Jean's work. Jean is an author, activist, and professor emerita at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her seventh book and first fiction is Mother Love, and it's published by Concord Free Press. Just came out this past year. Her most recent work of nonfiction is Boy with a Knife, a story of murder, remorse, and a prisoner's fight for justice, which came out in 2016, which explores the true story of Carter Kane Reed and the injustice of sentencing juveniles to adult prisons. Tronstein worked at Framingham Women's Prison in Massachusetts for 10 years, where she directed eight plays with prisoners. Her highly praised book about that work, Shakespeare Behind Bars, The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison, has been featured on NPR, The Connection, Here and Now, and in numerous print publications here and abroad. In addition, she's spoken around the world on women in prison. She's co founded the women's branch of Changing Lives Through Literature, which is an award winning alternative sentencing program featured in the New York Times and on the Today Show, and co authored two books about the program. She published a book of poetry, almost home free, and co edited the New England bestseller, Why I'm Still Married, Women Write Their Hearts Out on Love, Lost Sex, and Who Does the Dishes. She's also on the steering committee of the Coalition for Effective Public Safety in Massachusetts. And she takes apart the criminal justice system brick by brick for magazines and blogs such as Dig Boston, Commonwealth Magazine, Boston Magazine, Truthout. org, and the Huffington Post. And in 2018, she was invited to Italy and awarded the Gramsci International Award for Theater in Prison for her work in literature and theater for the past 30 years. Welcome, Jean.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Thank you. Boy, I sound good on paper.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:You sure do. You sound good everywhere. I guess, um, to give. Our audience a certain idea of the project that we've been working on right now. Many may know, many may not, that Shakespeare in Notre Dame is the founding organization of the Shakespeare in Prisons Network, an international, loosely affiliated group of about 300 prison theater practitioners and organizations that are primarily using Shakespeare as a means toward self actualization, re engagement with self, and also just promoting a spirit of ensemble ism and play in the most unlikely of settings in prisons, across the world. our last conference, the fourth Shakespeare in Prisons conference, which went online because of COVID, saw attendees from 27 U. S. states. And 17 nations were featured. So this is truly a global phenomenon now. And if we trace the roots all the way back, and my contention that Gene's work at Framingham is the first, the first, model of Shakespeare in production that there was there in certain research. We see that, the Royal Shakespeare Company had some kind of, what I want to say is that they brought productions in to a facility called Broadmoor in the UK, but it wasn't the prisoners actually performing Shakespeare. they were, in the audience. They were part of a larger tour the RSC was conducting around the UK. And if we go even further back a little more than that to about 1982, 1984, the legend, Cicely Berry, who was part of the Royal Shakespeare Company, facilitated some workshops with prisoners, there in the UK as well. That might be the first instance of Shakespeare being used in a carceral setting, but it was also branded a therapeutic, approach as opposed to these prisoners coming into conversation with performance and the performance itself being the modality that, provided, a certain re engagement with self. My contention being, Gene is the founder of Shakespeare in Prison's work that today is now, like I said, stretching across the world. At least 17 different countries are engaging this work in some sort of way. so I would like to know Gene. Going back to the very beginnings of your program in the mid 80s, how did it start? what was the call to you and what was the reception by framing him as you started your work there?
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:I was already in the prison teaching English classes, and I was teaching community college classes. I was actually a high school teacher, but Um, as I detail in Shakespeare Behind Bars, I thought it was a step up, you know, to teach a college class, even if it was in a prison. I had absolutely no idea about prisons. I had never really been exposed. I am not someone who had friends in prison, family in prison. I come from a very sort of typical, uh, upbringing, uh, you know, two parents, when I say typical, I mean, standard in a sense, at least what used to be standard in this country, two parents, um, you know, a brother, a sister, I was sort of a fairly upper middle class, but, you know, played outside, did regular things, did not know the word prison, not part of my world. So taught in the prison and I taught English classes and one day one of the women said to me, this was Dolly, who said to me, uh, Jean, you know, the men have theater in prison and we don't. And of course this was like, a challenge to my feminism and feminism was really just kind of coming into bloom at that period of time. And I thought to myself, I mean, this is not okay. The men were doing La Mancha and they had toured. And so I have a theater background. I trained as an actress. I had actually tried to be a professional actress and then decided I didn't like that life. I liked teaching more than the life of a professional actress, I thought, wow, maybe I'll do a play at Framingham, um, and having no idea what it entailed, no idea what play to do, I just said, okay, you can't do a play, I'll do one with you. That's how it began. It didn't begin with Shakespeare, it began with the notion of
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Oh, That's fantastic. And then, how did that evolve into, I guess it was, was it Merchant of Venice was the, was the first Shakespeare
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:how it involved to
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:film?
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:So I was teaching at Duxbury high school in Massachusetts, and I applied to go to Stratford for the summer to study Shakespeare as a high school teacher, it was a program. And the program was to see 24 plays in eight weeks, which is my idea of a vacation. And, um, I, um, had to come up with a proposition. I came up, and my brother helped me with this, um, the idea that I would do a play at the high school that I would also do in the prison with women. And I didn't know what play that would be, but we would do parts of it, and then they would all, I had this happy ever after idea, the women, the students would all come into the prison and see the play, and everybody would get to see what everybody else was doing, you know, naively not knowing. Anyway, I got the grant and I went to England and I saw Merchant of Venice at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, and I was blown away I didn't agree with the interpretation. I thought, this is not Shakespeare, this is not Shylock, this is not my idea. So, when I got back and I decided I was going to do Merchant of Venice and I started to talk to the women about it, they began to help me see it in a different way. And that, began, it took me, I mean it was really six months of research before we put on the play. I brought in costumes, real costumes. They tried them on, they got in trouble in the halls parading around in costumes and the guards wanted to send them back to their room, their cells. Um, saw videos, I watched Sir Lawrence Olivier's famous version. They, they discussed it and eventually we began to work on the play. And that, go ahead, I'm sorry, Scott.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Oh, no, that's okay. Please continue.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Well, I was going to say, and that is how I discovered how to work on a play. Because again, and I've said this to you before, I had no roadmap. I had no idea what I was doing. It was just the women wanted to play, we were going to do a play. They said, um, we're not talking like this. You know, we're not, this is not, we have to, you're going to do a play for 200 other women. You can't, we don't want to be idiots. So how are we going to do this, Jean? So we started in the classroom, putting the words in their language and using parts of the text. I told them the story. They loved the story. The women always loved Shakespeare's stories. They were grabbed by his stories. The language was hard. And so the language became what we tackled, but the stories were absolutely, they identified with the stories immediately. And so, um, they, through both improvisation, I'd set up situations and they would learn things about the text through improvisation. They would change things. So for example, would you have a pit bull attack you twice? And so the women understood the image of the word pit bull. That was in their reference. They knew pit bulls and they got the. of what Shakespeare was saying. So we would do improv, and we would do paraphrase, and one of the women eventually got tired and took the rest of the script back to her unit, finished it up, and we had our script.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Yeah, I think that that's one of the things that and we're gonna see a clip from this this production of VHS clip because this is what we have when we're creating archives like we're doing right now Right this very early kind of handheld VHS, uh, uh, recording of the production. And I think one of the things that, that stood out to me so much as we look at this field of applied Shakespeare and communities bringing it to their voice, like what are the terms of their engagement, right? Bringing Shakespeare to them as opposed to them going to Shakespeare, is that you'll see That there is Shakespeare's text at moments, and then you'll see the women finding their way from one moment to the next. And sometimes that is total improvisation in the moment, you know. So I give them all kinds of credit for that approach.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:When Rhonda, the, one of the women in the play who was playing Portia, landed on the quality of Mercy's speech, did not need to paraphrase it much. She, first of all, her background, interestingly enough, her mother was a preacher, so she came from a church background, and so when she starts in, and you'll see to say the quality of mercy is not strained, you see her beginning to preach, you see her moving toward Her a congregation and that was her way of grabbing on to the text. It was a it became a ministerial experience for her and for the rest of us, we were like, yeah, you know, Go Rhonda. Um, you know, but we Again, discovered. That was discovered. It was not planned. It was something that happened, but it taught me that parts of the text have to be kept and parts of the text can be changed.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Absolutely, absolutely. So, so going into this clip, can you, can you give us a little bit of a primer on You know, what was your approach? You know, I know that this was set in New York, I think in the 1920s. Um, so we're, and your inspiration for Shylock, I believe was Olivia's performance. Um, set us up.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:yeah, and also I would say a lot of Olivier's performance, but also, the woman playing Shylock HIV. And at this time, 1988, HIV was so feared that I'll never get over this image I have in my mind of guards wearing gloves, plastic gloves, transporting her from place to place. And you would see that and, and see them transporting her. She was not allowed to work in the kitchen. She was not allowed. She, she felt she was an outsider in a place of outsiders. And she is the one, and she chose to play Shylock. So what we see is a woman who knew that she, um, when, you know, that, that was outside of that. And so that when she encounters Portia, when she encounters someone who could help interpret her life, she looks at Portia as, Not a savior, but at first as who may hear her turmoil, hear her tragedy, hear her, and of course that's not what happens, but that's how in a way like, has come to help me. And that was important. And the woman playing Shylock, was so into it that You see, when you, when we watched her, she had one hand that was somewhat deformed. You, when she took the, the, the contract and she held the contract, she held it with her hand, and you can see her sort of embracing her deformity as she embraced the character.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Thank you. Let's, let's take a look at that clip.
Must be merciful and why must die. The quality of mercy is not strained it drop it from heaven, like the gentle rain onto the earth below. It is twice blessed. It blesses him that gives, and him that receives it is mightiest in the mightiest and becomes better to the throne monarch than the crown himself. His scepter is evidence of the awe and the majesty that causes men to kneel before kings. But mercy is above the scepter. It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, and it is it's characteristic of God himself. Earth earthly power is closest to God's when mercy seasons justice. Were we to answer to justice alone, none of us would see heaven because we are all sinners. When we pray, we pray for mercy. That same prayer teaches us to have mercy for others. I have said all of this to try and persuade you to drop this case. If you continue with this. You are asking for that man's life. My.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:It's fascinating, fascinating work there. Um, I'm, I'm really curious, you know, what that impact was. After the performance, both, both for your participants, um, maybe for Portia, which is a fantastic performance, as well as how did the, how did the institution respond after that show?
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Okay, so one thing I wanted to say in terms of that clip that I didn't say is that Portia and Shylock are the two characters who kept Shakespeare's language and added their own. And I think that's significant because they could, They felt Shakespeare's language. could embody him. They could embody that language. Um, in terms of the institution, what shocked me is that because Shylock is Jewish, And many of the women in the institution did not have experience necessarily with Jews. I didn't know that, how they would exactly respond. I knew they would respond to Shylock being an outsider and Shylock being played as an outsider. In an institution where all the women already feel like outsiders in their own world. So they got that part, but what happened was they started yelling out to the play during the performance. There's nothing wrong with being a Jew if that's what you are. things like that, that And they yelled as if they were in church. Again, you know, tell it sister. They yelled to Portia. They yelled to Shylock. They, they were so engaged in the play, that it was their success. When it was the people on stage's success. That's how identified they were. And afterwards, I know that Dolly said for an entire week, she felt like a star. People came up to her and said things to her. In terms of the institution, this was the first play I had done. They allowed 200 women to come. No families at this time, but they allowed guards to watch and It was a very profound, 200 people in an auditorium watching a play without security was profound. they were absolutely riveted, um, and they even, after the end of the play, Dolly gave me a plant that she had somehow engineered into the prison to give me, which I have no idea how, and they didn't make a big deal of it. And we were also allowed. A 15 20 minute cast party after the play to sit on the stage and drink cokes and eat chips and talk about the play. 15 minutes, which was phenomenal.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Wow. Wow. Um,
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:and then told them, this is your cast party.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:uh, which having, you know, worked inside 12 years, Those moments are, are, that, it may be just 15 minutes, but, but it might be the greatest 15 minutes in their lives for years. Based on kind of the, the, the emptiness of everyday existence, that isolation. So it's just this moment of community and connection that's built around, around, uh, Shakespeare and around the plays and around you. So, so moving on then, I believe that was 1988. Merchant of Venice, right? And then, and then talk to me about the, the pathway toward the second production, which was Lysistrata in 1990? 1989?
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Yeah, the next year, 1989. did one a year. So I think what one of the things that Merchant taught me was that I wanted to continue using classic texts. That what felt happened with the women is that they gained an access to a literature they had not been exposed to. And the. My feeling was the women deserve to have an access to world literature and that drove me to thinking about other plays that spoke to women's issues. And Lisa Strada had always been something that I thought underused as a play. It was such a fascinating story that women get together and they decide the way it's done. to have peace is to have their husbands not go to war, not be allowed and not get sacked, not have sex in order to, uh, you know, stop them from going to war. Um, we won't give you sex. And so the power of that moment for women withholding that, was interesting to me. And I mean, of course, we look at it through a lens of today, sexist, blah, blah, blah, men, women, two genders, all of that, but you can't look at things, I don't think you can look at things from yesterday how we see them today, because that's not how we saw it then. know, we, we had, I saw it as two genders at that point in time. And so, What happened with that play, because we had been successful, prison allowed me to do another play. That was, it was based on the fact that their success meant no trouble. That's what success meant. No trouble in the prison. Um, that's success from their point of view. So they allowed me to do another play and I decided to do Lisa Strana. And this was, this time the women were like, You're going to make us look like Animal House, Gene. Are you kidding? so they said, we're not wearing togas. You know, we are not wearing togas. We are not doing that. And, um, so what was interesting is I set this play and I got, I had a, um, I had a, uh, because I got a grant from the Mass Foundation of Humanities. I got several grants from them, and they were incredibly helpful because they got scholars of the different periods of time, and this scholar from that period of time verified for me that my idea of setting it in the early 19, in 1919, right before World War I, Happened was a good idea because just before World War I was, the suffragettes. And so we had the notion that women, and we had, we did the play outside, which was amazing. So women had big banners that said no sex, and they had bullhorns and they were dressed. Gorgeously, like in, you know, 1918 1920 costumes, and they got to play dress up in their minds. I mean, they were in dress up costumes and red and blue and vibrant and banners and Still, with the idea that they were going, we had a translated script withholding sex. So, that's how that came to be. And in this production, and I can't remember how this happened, we added song. So that we had the song, Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey. And the women sang that song, which of course is an old, uh, you know, a war song, uh, Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey. But it was so in terms of, they had parasols, twirling the parasols, dancing. It was, um, magical. It really was. So, uh, That, that was a lot of fun. And, um, one thing I want to say, the other thing, the freedom of this production, which we never recaptured again, we had a man, one of the soldiers in the play who had a hard on a permanent hard on. So we had essentially a dildo he had a permanent hard on. And that was, I mean, mind blowing to be doing this in a prison for an audience. Sort of making fun of what, what would happen if, you know, the men couldn't, you know, have sex with their wives.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:1990? Yes, that was, and the curtain call was very memorable because of a moment and a little bit of a something that happened with that. So I, You had said, um, in the lead up to that, that, that this was a tra you know, a translated script. Is this your first collaboration with Joyce Van Dyke and, and Liz Estrada, or did that come later?
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Joyce van Dyck was, my first collaboration with Joyce was later. That, this was with, uh, Larry, uh, I, going to forget his last name, Larry Rosenblum. was a, anyway, this was with a Wellesley scholar. Also, Joyce worked with me on, on, um, taming, on, um,
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Raptrue.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:No, no, on, um, Merchant of Venice. She
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Oh!
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:with me on that. I mean, she didn't do anything with the script, but I talked to her about the production. I had lots of conversations about it. She didn't do any script adaptation until later. didn't do a script adaptation, but he read the script. And he made some suggestions on the script.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Great, great. Well, let's, let's take a look at Lysistrata. You know, unfortunately, the existing copy of that, again, um, this one was a little bit compromised. So we kind of had to find the moments and just give a certain sense of what that production was like. The spirit of it, like you said, the costuming is wonderful. And, yeah, so I think we're gonna, we're gonna see a little bit of Bill Bailey here.
Come home. I'm on the, I'll do the cooking, honey. I'll play the run. I know after. Inside to join your wife to supper. You must perform the same usual song and dance. Then we'll open our baskets to you and all we have is yours. But you must promise upright good behavior from this day on. each man home with his woman when you. You must sing when the On All Voices We be a you. All joining and lonely, you must sing when on our will race there be a hot.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:So, coming, coming out of that, um, one of the, one of the questions I had, this one, was it performed outside? Did you, how did the, the performance, uh, manifest with, with Lysistrata?
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Well, the outside performance was interesting. Um, I mean, I, I, I had one of the things, you know, there was a lot of chaos, uh, in a way. would be rehearsing outside and people would be passing by and yelling and doing things on. But it, it, I don't, were, I, I cannot remember how we decided to perform outside. I think it was just because I don't know. There was, somebody suggested it. I said, I have, I cannot remember that, but it's, but it was allowed and it made sense because we were able to use like the door from the gym for entrances and people could come rushing out the door and they could come also walking down what looked like a sidewalk and walking here and there and the prison setting So it was in front of the prison setting of, um, and it was sort of trees and grass and pretty and a bench and the, you know, the women could sit on the bench. Um, so that never happened again, but they didn't mind. They didn't give me trouble about that. Um, There was trouble because one woman did something in her unit and got taken out of our production three days before the play was supposed to be put on and they wouldn't let her, they made her go to solitary. I, I tried to get her out. They got mad at me for trying to get her out. You know, they wouldn't let people come into the play. You know, there was a lot of hassle around the production, but stepped up, you know, the stage manager played a part and she memorized things best she could. I mean, it was like what happens in the real world. And they loved that, that they were in the real world, um, you know, doing what the real world does. Making do when a production, they are needed for a production. And that, I think, was also a lesson, a learning for them.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Well, apparently, There wasn't too much trouble because they let you back to do another show the next year, um, which I think this, the, the adaptation of The Scarlet Letter, um, even though we're supposed to be talking about Shakespeare or whatever, I feel like this was the most unique production of Scarlet Letter that, that I've ever experienced. And, and now 1990,
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Yes,
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:with, with this production. And I believe this, this was a collaboration with Joyce Van Dyke. Is that correct? Um, give us a little background about how that, that very original approach manifested for you.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Well, I had the idea. Myself, this was my idea that I'd always loved Scarlet Letter and I'd always been very intrigued by the A, you know, and I was intrigued by sh and the women, it's interesting because there is a lot of shame women in prison and the shame of being a woman who got in trouble, of a woman who couldn't handle her children, a woman who, uh, I think more shame for women in a lot of ways than men. Shame is part of the incarceration, part of their, their, feeling of letting down everybody in their family. that shame, I think, manifests itself, of course, in the sense of adultery, although in, in, in Hawthorne's play, Hester's shame is not as pronounced as the town would like it to be, but the is still shame in having and shame in going at, you know, it's, it's a woman doing that is so much more looked down upon and still today than a man, um, even younger, you know, it's still somehow not okay. So that was 1A. the shame of the adultery. I started to somehow realize, because we were in the age of AIDS at this time, that AIDS was another incredible shame and incredible horror that the women were facing. I mean, I'd learned it from, you know, Katie, who, You know, was in, uh, Taimi, was in, uh, uh, Merchant. Um, I learned the shame that she felt. Um, not even, you know, being treated with somebody's hands, having to have gloves on. So that was another A. And then the third A was abuse. And all the women, they don't even ask you if you go to Framingham, uh, you know, if you were abused anymore. It's almost like, when did the abuse start? such, it's so taken for granted that people are both physically and sexually abused. So those three A's, I said to Joyce, I want to use the scarlet letter. I want to use the main thread, but I want to have some other threads to come in. And I also want the chorus, because the chorus enacts the shame. The chorus has, helps the women feel their own shame. the chorus is the women being the voice of other women condemning women. It's not so much just men, it's women condemning other women. I wanted that. I wanted that. in the, in the prison, because that's also true. And so Joyce did this original script, and then, as usual, the women adapted the original script, even though Joyce had adapted a script, we still had to futz around with it. And then the casting was phenomenal, and the casting involved Violet Amoureux, who, uh, who was a very famous person in Massachusetts who'd been accused of sex abuse for her daycare center. And she and her daughter were both incarcerated. And I, and, and she, she was, she played the, the original Hester, even though she was 72 years old, I think at the time, 70 years old at the time. And she was Hester with her white hair she looked like Hester. And we had Amazing costumes. And we had this in the round. And Hester, you know, one of the best moments in the play is when Hester says, know, there are more guilty people out there than there are in here. And she whirled around on top of, you know, very witch like. and Hester, and Hester felt very witch like. And then, of course, the notion of her daughter. Becoming the one who was abused, which was of how the next A comes in. And then her somehow progeny becoming one with AIDS. So there was a movement of some sort from this shame, from one kind of shame to the next.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Wow. Let's, let's take a look at that.
Some people seems to forget what the Scarlet letter meant. They said a stood for Abel. Esther was so strong with a woman's strength. Did you know my mother became famous, not only for that, but for her sewing. It came from miles around. She was so delicate with her needle. Everyone had had it. It was a. The governor, yes, the minister christening go for the babies, repping for the dead in their coffin scarf for the military man. But I never thought anyone I've ever asked my mother to make a bridalveil. I never saw my mother complain. I never saw her fight back. She would sit here sewing, wearing this ugly plain dress. The only ornament she wore was a scarlet letter. And now there are so many of you come to me for help and advice. Women too, women who have been wounded are wrong. Women whose lives have been wasted. And women who beared the dreary burden of their own heart because they can find no one to give it to. They also come to me asking why they are so wretched and what is the remedy I tell them. That there are more guilty people out there than there are in here, and that if the world succeeds in making you lonely and sex like a cruel child, it will despise you for it.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:I think, you know, between the, the Scarlet Letter and, and the production that we're going to talk about next, Rapture, these, these, these just seem to need to be when you had, uh, You had captured, uh, something, something very unique about the ensemble and the location where you were working. Like the, if I, if I made the template was at its strongest during, during Scarlet Letter and then subsequently Rapture, I think there's a certain sense of innovation. It was happening in the Scarlet Letter, which certainly Joyce's contributions and adapting the script that helped, but also the ownership that the women displayed in this and there's that moment where, uh, the Hester with AIDS, the guard comes up and just very intentionally puts on the plastic gloves and just kind of pushes her off the stage. It's just so moving. I mean, I wish I wish I could have seen that in person, but at least we still have this. This copy from this VHS is grainy VHS copy from 40 years. Well, 30, let's call it 35 years ago to to this. To, um, preserve that moment. So, so after that performance, which was quite serious and, uh, and quite profound, it seems like the, the whole process of rap shoe was all about joy and celebration and bringing, bringing Shakespeare in conversation with hip hop. Um, let's, why don't you tell us about the, the origin of that project and, and.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:You, you really nailed, nailed it, Scott. That's, that's exactly, I mean, needed joy. I don't really remember the world in 1991 and 2, but I do remember that we needed to We needed to, I mean, there were a lot of people in Scarlet Letter and I had a lot of people in Rapshrew. I, that was when the ensemble was the largest. And in, in both of those shows, we used bits of Spanish because there were lots of Spanish speaking people. And, you know, we, we, the whole multicultural nature of the project sort of grew in that, in that time. Um, with Rapshrew, Joyce, again, helped. She wrote the, I gave her music. I mean, I, I chose songs that I wanted to use and she helped write the rap lyrics for, like we used, um, you know, it takes two to make a thing go right for that song. And what was interesting is that, um, I, the women had trouble putting, saying all the language, and so I had to help them with the rap. I mean, of course, they, they had choreographed the dancing, and one of the women choreographed dancing, so there was dancing and rap and music. And I think it was interesting in that to figure out our interpretation of Kate, that's always, that was a lot of fun. And the woman who was playing Kate, interestingly enough, she had been, um, In the production. I can't remember when we did. Well we also did a production of Waiting for Lefty. She was in that too. I did not know she had had an eating disorder. And I did not know that she had Actually been raped, um, and had a lot of horrible trauma that she was dealing with. And so when she, but she brought to Kate, cause you know, I, is not therapy. And I think you made that point in the beginning. will have their therapy. I mean, they all had trauma, all of these women, incredible trauma, and they brought the trauma, but they didn't use the trauma. as a crutch. They didn't use the trauma as, um, anything but to fuel their art, which I think is what great artists do. And they learned that, you know, I can use my pain to fuel my art. And Kate, when she came to her interpretation of, I mean, when, when the woman playing Kate came to her interpretation of, uh, Kate. And in our production, we called the, Petruchio, Truck T. And it was, took place in LA. Kate saw how manipulative she could be, how clever she could be, but she really thought she had the upper hand. And she took that interpretation of Kate and allowed, herself to be sort of as being manipulated, but she did not feel she was manipulated. So we were, you know, some people didn't agree with my interpretation of it, but I felt she was, it was a feminist interpretation. I felt that it did give a, you don't have the best of me, even if I understand that men need to be, uh, sort of, uh, um, cajoled. Men need to be treated certain ways. And that was what Kate, our Kate did. Now, I want to say one other thing about this was interesting. The guy who played, well, the woman who played Truck T had something called sexual seizures. And these were seizures that she had. And when she came to, she had a regular seizure that looked like epilepsy. And when she came to, she was sexually attracted to whoever she saw immediately before her. Yes, absolutely bizarre. So we had to worry a little bit that she might have a seizure during the show and something could happen. She didn't. And I kind of knew she would hold it together. I don't know why I knew that. Maybe because I understand so deeply from my own personal experience. My first play I was ever in, I got Poison Ivy and I had Poison Ivy. I was 10 years old. all over my whole body. And I went out under the lights and I didn't feel how horrible it was until I got off stage. And then I knew I had poison ivy at 10 years old. And I somehow knew that this, that, that our character, Kate, would not have a sexual seizure during the show. And she didn't.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Wow. And you know, sometimes adrenaline is a good thing, right? I know that, uh, I've had my experiences too over the years where I was injured or not feeling well. Um, I've even, I even, uh, one time had food poisoning and had to go do the show and I was just out on stage. I was fine. I turned around, went off stage and it wasn't pretty. And then I'd turn around, back on stage, get it together. So, so it is kind of crazy sometimes how performant. And that, that's the stress of that performance kind of, um, takes you out of whatever physical malady you may be experiencing and pushes you in the moment. But as soon as you come off stage, it's 10 times worse. So I'm truly.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:say another thing about the shrews a minute? Um, the shrews were the rap group, we called them the shrews, and they had hats and it said shrew, which was also part of our humor at, you know, making fun of women who were shrews. And I want to say that there is one woman now who is out and in Massachusetts. Her name is Angie Jefferson. She was in the play. She wouldn't mind me saying this. She's very proud of it. And she has yet to see this. And one of the things I'm going to do is, is have her over and let her see herself, you know, 30 years ago doing this production, which, you know, she's working. She's in the community. She will be blown away.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Wow. Well, let's take a look at, at Rap Shoes. This is 1992's production.
Good Lord. Look how bright the moon shines. The moon, it's the sun. It's not nighttime. Now it's the moon that shine so bright. I know it's the sun. If I say it's the moon, it's the moon. If I say it's the star, it's the star. Whatever I say go. I got a myself, and by the way, you get a job says.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:I love how it ends, right? This, this joy there's dance, there's innovation happening on stage, and just. More than anything else, love. I mean, it's palpable, even watching that, that old Grady clip of just how invested they were, how much fun they were having, and, and at the same time, there's always, and this is something that, that strikes me with my own work at Westville Correctional Facility here in Indiana, is that there's this delight in, in doing something unexpected of, of perhaps just, just slightly breaking the rules, you know, kind of in a tongue in cheek way. Like we're, I can't believe we're able to do this in the facility that we're in. And it just promotes this joy that, that for me, you know, that's what theater is about. Um, sometimes we see some really depressing, dark things. But there's a certain connection that is light, and I'll, I'll call that joy for lack of a better term right now, but that is exactly what I saw at the end of that clip there. Um, so that's 1992, and then, you know, for the purposes of just keeping this to about an hour or so, you know, there are quite a few plays that, that, that you did over this decade at Framingham that we aren't necessarily exploring. Are there any memorable moments or what were those plays and, um, you know, if you want to just give us a little summary about the rest of that work and then we'll move on to, um, the impact and the end of that program.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:I'll say that one, the last play I did, which was Arsenic and Old Lace, which in, in theater terms is considered an old chestnut. It's like one of those things, at least I thought, you know, you could never go wrong, you know, with Arsenic and Old Lace. So the way that came to be is that I had wanted to do An adaptation of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. And I was going to do that play and have all, and have eight women play Janie. And Janie, and I'll tell, it's a story of abuse. And Janie would tell her story of overcoming abuse and why she had to, you know, how she was in love with this man and blah blah blah blah, whatever happened. That was going to be eight stories. And the prison got word of that and they said it's too racial. That was their, those were their terms. It's too racial. of course makes no sense, but that's what they said. So you can't do that play. They had never told me I couldn't do something before. But now as we are moving toward more and more Lock them up and throw away the key. More and more punitive. More and more of this. The whole world of prison is changing. They're starting to watch. Jean, you can do a play. And they used to let me video the plays and I sent them always home to their families. This time they said, you can do a play, but you can't send it home. You can video it so you have a record of it, but you can't send it, but you can't do their Eyes Were Notching God. I said, okay. I'll do arsenic and old lace. So them the script. Of course they didn't read it, but you know, I gave them the script and told them they said fine. And so, this was part of my, my nature of like, as you know, I used to do things like wear a gold chain in under my, Bye bye. So they didn't know I had a gold chain and didn't catch it in the trap. I would do that. I had a sort of FU kind of, I, I couldn't help myself with a certain amount of, you think you're going to tell me what I can't do? Let, let me show you how you cannot tell me what I can't do. So with an arsenal gold I cast the sisters. They're two sisters and they get rid of these men who are, are horrible to the, they think the men are horrible to the community and they get rid of them and put them in their basement, i. e. kill them and put them in their basement. And I didn't quite consider that they were murdering people and putting them in the basement and I'm doing this in a prison, number one. And number two, so I cast it. One sister white and one sister black. And so that is how I get it. So until the prison came to see the production, they didn't know that, number one. And number two, I had to have, because they're cops that come into the thing, you know, when they find out dead people in the basement. I had to have correction officer uniforms. And so the, some of the cast members are dressed up as cops, which also is like a no no in the prison. So they didn't know this was happening. They made me count every safety pin. They made me count everything I brought in, but they were a little appalled because they had said to me, we can do this as long as it's fluff. And once it's not fluff, So that was my last production that I did in the prison, um, partly also because One of the women took the video, showed it at her halfway house. They found out about it. They said, you, Jean, you can't do this. You did something you're not supposed to do. They tried to fire me. It got overturned by the state of Massachusetts because my president and the, head of the legislature and a whole bunch of people said, you can't kick Gene out of prison. So they had to keep me back there. But by that point, Pell grants were taken out of prison. No one was paying for work anymore. There weren't any people around to do the production. So that's how my program dwindled because of that.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Yeah, I think succession and planning is, is very difficult. in this field, right? Uh, because we are all siloed. And that was one of the reasons that, that, um, uh, we started the Shakespeare in Prisons Network. So that we could share these individual experiences and, and what the worst case might be, like in this instance, there were tensions with the, the facility, right? Which, as prison theater practitioners, we know that 50 percent of this gig is like navigating the prison administration, um, because things change every time you're coming in, every time you're going out, depending on, you know, who's running the shakedown and, and they might want to see what's inside your mouth or, you know, others that might miss the gold chain around your neck, right? But there is that, that certain inconsistency, even in rehearsal. Um, I know I've gone in and, uh, there was a fight or something, um, not on my watch, but there was a fight on the floor and the guys lost their commissary privileges and haven't had sugar in like five days. So I just get kind of like zombies in my, in my classroom. Right. So there's anything but predictability in the field and succession is one of those things that it's, I mean, I think it's getting better now there, there are programs like, like, you know, we have this, this big film, Sing Sing, this major, this major release that really documents. Uh, a program through Rehabil Rehabilitation, through the arts in New York at Sing Sing, uh, prison that, you know, sure it was started by one man, but what it grew into is actually an ensemble of practitioners that are going in and it ensures a certain longevity and succession just in, its, in its, uh, uh, in, in the, the formation of that ensemble. Right. Um, so, so. I guess now that was so that was arsenic and old lace was that 94, 95?
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Yeah,
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Okay. And so by the time 96, 97 rolls around,
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:mean, 95, 96, I started to come in again and then I couldn't do anything. There weren't enough women to, who wanted to be in the classes and boom, you know, that was the end of that. And, um, in a way it was disappointing, but in a, I mean, in a way it was, I had, I felt like I had, I mean, I'd given 10 years of my life to this and I, I'd given so much and, uh, and I had made friends. I mean, Dolly was out of prison by this time. I used to go to her house and she'd make me spaghetti and, you know, I mean, you know, I, I knew I had had an impact on the women and an impact on, The world, really, from, I mean, I know that now. I didn't know it at the time, Scott. You and I have talked about this. I had no idea that I had done something groundbreaking. I didn't know it. I just did it because Dolly said, you have to do it. You know, so I said, okay, Dolly, if you say I have to do it, I'll do it. You know, um, and, and, you know, when I get Validation. I shared with you also, I got a wonderful letter from Bertie, who was in five plays, um, Jamaican. And, She deported, not allowed to come back to this country because of her crime. But she wrote me telling me that I had changed her life and she told her children about me. And, you know, there she is in Jamaica, 30 years later, thinking about me. Just out of the blue writes me a letter. And I think we get these things. We get these, you know, it's a kind of validation. Um, Working with people who are incarcerated, I think, changes us as much as it changes them because we get to understand the value of our freedom and the value of our upbringing and the value of what we got that they didn't get. it's not a coincidence that I'm not committing a crime, that I didn't commit yet a crime, you know, um, it's not a coincidence that, that these women are where they are. And I think you said this and I do want to make the point. It's wonderful that this all started with women, um, is not something that people think, because mostly what gets attention are the men doing this work.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:which is a actually a fantastic segue, um, to the book, because, um, and, and anecdotally in the book came out in 2003, 2000, 2001, 2001, the book comes out. entitled Shakespeare Behind Bars, and just coincidentally at that time, Kurt Toffland, who's another one of our founders of the Shakespeare in Prisons Network, and the feature of this 2005 documentary entitled Shakespeare Behind Bars, because that was the name of his program, that That reached globally, right? That we can, we can look at that documentary as perhaps being probably the greatest, having the greatest impact on, on promoting the field, this, this kind of work globally. Um, but it just so happened that your book and his program were, were titled the same. Can you, can you tell us what that conversation was like when you found one another?
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Well, when I had a friend, a wonderful friend in New York, who has since passed away, belonged to, and I'm not going to get this right, because Shakespeare, it was a Shakespeare, um, organization in New York City that where people go and hear people talk about Shakespeare. I'm so sorry I can't remember the name. But anyway, my friend Shella wanted, when my book came out, she wanted me to come to The, um, to present at this, this program. And so I wrote a letter, you know, mentioning my book to the director of the program, he writes me back and he says about this is incredibly fraudulent. There's a program called Shakespeare Behind Bars and that's the original Shakespeare. do you think you are? Da da da da. And so then I wrote him back and I said, listen, I'm really sorry, but not fraudulent. And I explained how I came to be and more of the depth and so on. And then, and then I had Kurt write him he was so apologetic. He said, well, why don't I have both of you come to do a program at this? And I said, that would be great because Kurt and I had met. Well, we hadn't met. We had heard of each other somehow, but, but we, that was the first place we met at doing a program together at, in New York at this Shakespeare, this, it was like a salon. It was really fun, a real salon kind of thing. And then we did something in Washington, D. C. with other practitioners, Kurt and I, and I met Jonathan Shaler, and then I was also Sort of into Jonathan's book I didn't contribute it to Jonathan's book and became part of the network. There had been no network and I, I do want to say it was a relief. Such a relief to find out other people were doing this work because. Because when I started, I would drive home crying in the car on the way home, and I wasn't married at the time. I didn't have anyone I could share this work with. And it was so profound, know, the women would come to the door of the prison as far as they could, and they'd say, drive safe, Jean, home safely. And the guards would say things like, You'll never get out of here to them. And I would see and hear those things and it would break my heart. And who could I tell? And now I can tell you,
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:For what good that's worth.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:well, but it's, you've, you've heard it too.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, this, this work, um, for the past 12 years, you know, started here at Notre Dame as we, one of our resident companies, Actors from the London Stage, which is a five British troupe that travels to universities all over the country. But the show, It is contained in a suitcase. We call it the showcase. So one additional piece of luggage that they take on the airplane with them that weighs under 50 pounds. You open this, this suitcase up and this show is there, right? You just need that in a space of 20 feet by 20 feet and you've got a full Shakespeare by shi by five actors. And then back in 20 12, um, when I was looking at what are ways to connect with the social justice mission of, of Notre Dame, being this force for good, bringing light to, to places that needed it the most, right? I was like, well, here's a, an easy, Uh, way for us to, to move into that sphere and just start having preview shows at the facility, and then that just mushroomed and mushroomed and mushroomed to, to, um, us being a global leader in this field of applied Shakespeare, which brings me full circle to, to what it is that we're actually doing in this collaboration with Jean, um, that is so important. Um, being a producer myself. Having run companies that, didn't, didn't do anything for the archive in their early years, right? And there's just such jewels missing from, from the archival history of these, of these producing companies. Well, I didn't want that to happen with the field of what is now known as Applied Shakespeare. This is a subfield of academic study in, uh, at the Shakespeare Association of America. This is, uh, one of the, the arms, the, the burgeoning arms of, um, the ways that we produce and, and look at, at theater as a, a social utility for the Shakespeare Theatre Association, which I just became the president of that. President of last weekend for the next two years. So pushing this work forward. How are, how in the 21st century can we look back to these seeds like that you planted, um, through your bravery, your dedication, through, through your own pain, you know, um, feeling that you were alone in this movement. How can we Archive what it is you've done as an example for future generations. And so this, this piece that we're talking about right now is kind of the culmination of a long belabored process that we've asked you to undertake of Getting together the ephemera from these productions, getting together the writings that you did in, in the ensuing years, getting together, um, all of your materials that you would, that you think best represent this program at Framingham, and putting them into a formal archive with Shakespeare at Notre Dame, which becomes the first the first collection in a research library of applied Shakespeare. And setting this template together. And I'm so happy that over the course of this process, we have been able to locate you in the history of this movement and And I really don't have any doubt that you're the first one to do it, and I'm so glad I happened to framing it. I'm so great, so glad that it happened with women. Um, so that's, that's the culmination of this year or two that we've been working on this, and then we're going to present that, that work even more broadly as the archive is officially transferred here to Notre Dame. Um, so, any, you know, I would, I think we should probably leave that there, um, but I would love, you know, if there's anything in closing that you would like to say, the overall impact of your work on, on yourself, on the facility, on the field in general, what you're seeing happening today in 2025, um, et cetera, please.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Oh boy. Well, I have two thoughts. One is that this, of course, changed my life, uh, changed my life because, um, and again, I didn't know it would change my life, but it changed my life because I have dedicated my life to bringing change. the truths of people who are, uh, incarcerated to the world, to bringing those truths to the world, whether it's through theater or writing or whatever I do through anything. That's one thing I want to say. But the second thing is that, uh, It's not coincidental that Shakespeare was the motivator for so many people. And I want to say how Shakespeare, when I first started doing this, I had a dream about Shakespeare, that we were having lunch, and he had salad. I didn't. But I remember asking him, and I remember I somehow understood through this lunch that this was what he wanted, um, that, that somehow his work goes so beyond, um, so beyond what we imagine his work does, that it goes into the darkest, darkest, darkest places where people have the, the most, most pain, and the most joy too. I don't want to say just pain because there's a lot of joy in those dark places, but I think it's important to recognize how Shakespeare really gave us and gives us so much of this world. And I think that all of the people who participated in these programs would probably say something to that effect, that they didn't realize how Shakespeare could affect them and change their lives. So that, that's what I want to say.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:I couldn't agree with you more. In my own experience, the challenge of approaching these works, uh, the challenge of the language, uh, the, the, uh, the outsider view that, that, that folks in prison could never engage Shakespeare, just, just, just reinforces for me who Shakespeare is and who Shakespeare is for and I've learned more about Shakespeare in prison than in any academic conference that I've ever attended because the lived experience that, that lies behind Shakespeare. Their engagement with these texts is like no, is like no one else's. So
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Amen, Scott.
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:thank you, Gene, so much for, for A, for, for being here today and B, for, for being a pioneer, for bringing this work and, and. Just let me, just let me tell you that, that you are so important for those of us that are doing this work now, that it's just an honor for me to be collaborating with you in this way to ensure that, that a hundred years from now, 200 years from now, people are looking back on this moment and saying, wow, that's where it started.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:you,
scott-jackson_1_01-14-2025_140716:for being with us, Gene, so much love.
jean-trounstine_1_01-14-2025_140716:Scott. much love to