Prison Performing Arts: Act V

In class on Friday we listen to one man’s encounter with prisoners that were attempting to perform Act V of the famous Shakespeare play Hamlet.

The author choose a perfect field cite to do his observation of Prison Performing Arts because he actually went to a prison where prisoners where preparing to perform the Hamlet. The prisoners where very cooperative, and didn’t mind him being there. The author was able to talk to many of them about who they played, how they fit their roles, and what they thought about the character they where playing.
The author observation of the subculture gives us a better understanding because of the amount of detail that the author goes into from the opening of the peace that we listened to. The author starts by describing his walk into the prison. He talks about what the prison looks like, and he goes on to describe the different prisoners that he sees. In the room that they prisoners practiced in he noticed a huge black button that always reminded him that he was dealing with dangerous people because the button would set off an alarm that would send many guards with loaded weapons to the room to protect him and the directors. The author also describes the hardships of that the prison actors had to go through that regular actors did not. Among the hardships that the prisoners faced was first to be stripped search before and after every practice, they were put into a hot room for practice, many were uneducated so pronouncing many of the words was a problem, and how much practice time they got with each other. He went on to tell how they had to shout their lines through the bars to each other for extra practice.
The interview techniques that the author used to help understand the subculture was very resourceful. His interviews of the different prisoners in the play help give the reader a inside look on the prisoners perception of the play, and how prisoners expressed how they feel about the characters they are playing. The interviews shows how many of prisoners could easily “get into” the role they played because they felt like they could easily relate to those characters. These interviews help someone like me who does not have access to the prisoners get information that we would not normally get.
The norms and values of this subculture is evident. It shows that the men in the subculture norms are still loosely the same as the other prisoners who are not part of the Performing Arts. They have no special privileges just because they are in the play. These actors however value the play deeply because a few of them use it as a release from their surroundings for that time that they are performing. Others feel like they have changed for the better.