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When Muddy Flowers Bloom: The Shakespeare Project at Racine Correctional Institution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jonathan Shailor
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Extract

About one hundred inmates are seated in the prison gym, waiting for the performance of king lear to begin. Then Jamal, as Edmund, steps out from behind the makeshift set and paces across the stage, his sharply trimmed goatee pointing outward like an accusing finger, his burning gaze fixed on the audience. He raps: “Secret fears are brought to life on stage. / My life is in a rage, and to write my life / One page is not enough. / But if I had one mike I might be able to / Escape this cage … bring Shakespeare to life through my high beams.” Appropriating Cordelia's words, he declares that “I am not the first who have incurred the worst / But I have concurred with those who oppose my life's worth. …” He continues:

      They label me violent because I stay bottled up and silent
      And although my life is like a raging sea
      My heart sings … no life is quiet.
      Stop complaining, you say, but I can't because
      I'm trapped on the stage of life's lies.
      And I ask you
      Why brand they us with base? With baseness?
      Bastardy? Base? Base?

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 123 , Issue 3 , May 2008 , pp. 632 - 642
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by The Modern Language Association of America

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References

Jamie, Cheatham. Unpublished ms. May 2005.Google Scholar
Terry, Flores. “Night with the Bard: Racine Inmates Take on Roles, Challenges of King Lear.” Kenosha News 28 Apr. 2005: A1.Google Scholar
McLean, Andrew. Unpublished ms. May 2005.Google Scholar
William, Shakespeare. King Lear. 1994. Ed. Gill, Roma. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Joe, White. “The Prisoner's Voice.” Prison Theatre. Ed. Thompson, James. London: Kingsley, 1998. 183–96.Google Scholar