Inside the challenges — and successes — of staging Shakespeare at a California state prison

San Francisco Chronicle​

3 days ago

Kelon Williams as the King of Navarre took a beat-length pause, savoring the suspense.
His character was introducing 'the Navarre model,' a scheme in which he and his buddies renounce women and indulgence to better themselves through study. Delivering the line with a triumphant grin, Williams made a choice a thoughtful actor might make in any production of Shakespeare's 'Love's Labour's Lost.' He conveyed not only how brilliant the king thinks the idea is but also how chuffed he is with himself for coming up with it.
But in so many ways, this production at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center was unlike any other take on Shakespeare's early-career comedy. An alarm in the yard delayed it, so director Lesley Currier had to vamp for a bit, explaining its plot, before the show could start. Costumes, driven in and out of the facility each day, can't have any metal on them, necessitating a last-minute substitution of paper crowns for weightier ones.
Actors officially rehearse with Marin Shakespeare Company's Currier and co-director Suraya Keating just once per week, and in two different groups, which means they might not get any time with their scene partners. They might also get disciplined or sent to another prison at any moment, so understudying is common.
And we, the audience on Friday, May 23, had to submit our IDs weeks in advance of the performance and get cleared through multiple gates to enter. We couldn't wear any blue, orange, yellow, green or gray to avoid any confusion with incarcerated people or guards. Then after lining up outside the prison, we had to give verbal consent that we understood, as a guard put it, 'The State of California has a no-hostage policy' — meaning that if a prisoner grabs you and threatens your life, the state will not release him in order to save you.
For all that preamble, when you finally make it through the final gate and enter the yard, some prisoners mill about freely on performance days, with the actors shaking your hand or fist-bumping you in welcome. When they hand you your program and a copy of the San Quentin News, they thank you for coming.
California prisons made national news this year as yet another one of President Donald Trump's political pawns. When he posted on social media in May that he'd ordered law enforcement agencies to reopen Alcatraz as a prison for 'America's most ruthless and violent Offenders,' he wasn't just ignoring decades of understanding that the island was too expensive to operate in that capacity; he was exhuming an outdated notion of correctional facilities' purpose, in order to stoke fear and score easy points.
But prisons aren't a black hole from which the incarcerated never return.
'Ninety-five percent of people who are incarcerated go home, and they will be our neighbors,' Currier told the Chronicle, citing 2016 data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. 'We want those people to want to live their best lives, want to be contributing citizens, want to know how to ask for help when they need it, because they will face many, many challenges.'
She also referred to an American Civil Liberties Union statistic noting that while the U.S. has just 5% of the world's population, it has 20% of the world's prisoners. In other words, we should be working to close more prisons, not reopen shuttered ones like Alcatraz.
The tension among incarceration's various goals — punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation — is age old. But at San Quentin, the balance has recently swung toward rehabilitation. In 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a $239 million plan to renovate the facility into a rehab center in the mode of Scandinavian prisons, complete with farmers market, cafe and podcast recording studio.
At the same time, Marin Shakespeare's Shakespeare in San Quentin program, which has been teaching theater at the prison since 2003, lost state funding this year. The grants, provided by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, included one from California Arts in Corrections (co-administered by the California Arts Council) and another for 'innovative programming.'
But Currier ensured the program would continue, noting she'd raised alternate funds from private sources.
At 'Love's Labour's Lost,' the program's effect on incarcerated men was staggering.
As the silly Spaniard Don Adriano de Armado, Nythell Collins rolled his Rs long enough for a gargle. When Navion 'Smoove' Starks, as a parson so relaxed he appeared to be on quaaludes, started to read aloud a love letter for some country rubes, he amped up the moment's humor by getting so into another man's effusions that he started to get all hot and bothered himself.
Meanwhile, Gabriel Moctezuma, as nobleman Biron, showed he already has the chops (honed from youth theater in Sacramento) to appear on any stage in the Bay Area. He activated each moment of stage time with intention, whether it was leaning in with raised eyebrows to flirt, recoiling at the smell of a member of a lower class, impersonating a 'decrepit, sick and bedrid father' or palpitating in swoony lust.
Then, when he launched into a rendition of John Legend 's 'All of Me' (Currier and Keating interpolated lots of pop songs into the show), a golden voice beamed out.
'We're all trying to put forth the best part of ourselves,' he told the Chronicle after stepping offstage. 'This is a healing process for all of us.'
Alums also sing the program's praises. John Neblett served a 30-year sentence, much of it at San Quentin, for second-degree murder. Now, he said he makes a six-figure salary as a non-union electrician, using skills he learned at the facility. He's also proud he can still recite from memory poetry he wrote while inside, inspired by Shakespeare, Philip Sidney and John Donne.
Performing Shakespeare, he said, gave him the self-confidence to apply for his current job. If you can perform for a mass of people, he said, 'you know you're good.'
Actors, he continued, 'have a wider experience of reality than a lot of people,' and that insight translates beyond the stage. 'You know what that character wants, and you come up with ways to get what that character wants with your scene partner.'
Neblett still performs when he can via Marin Shakespeare's Returned Citizens Theatre Troupe.
Stereotypes about life behind bars suggest that other prisoners might ridicule the ones who choose to do Shakespeare — especially those who, like Brady Godoy, Angie Gordon, Aaron Zendejas and Jooty Johnson, perform as a princess and her ladies in waiting in 'Love's Labour's Lost.' But the vibe in the audience during this recent show was supportive, even loving. Whoops resounded. Every song became a sing-along.
During a brief postshow talkback, one prisoner named White said, 'I thought the teamwork was awesome.' Another named Max, who was wearing a 'peer support' uniform, said with a laugh, 'I'm going to need dance lessons from two of the cast members. We'll talk about that later!'
Godoy admitted, 'Two years ago, I never would have imagined I would be playing the Princess of France.' He told the Chronicle he signed up for the program 'because it was out of my comfort zone, and I knew it was going to be just a vital piece of growth and strengthening.'
The reason for prisoners to perform Shakespeare, as opposed to any other dramatist, isn't just that Currier's company is dedicated to him.
'Shakespeare gives us questions but not answers,' Currier explained. Among them: 'How do we think we should deal with the kind of violence that shows up in the world? When are we willing to give people a second chance? When are we willing to love people, despite whether or not they've learned how to heal?'
She added that while she's met plenty of people who told her that prison saved their lives, 'I've also met plenty of people in prison who I would call rehabilitated and ready to go home who are kept in prison for years and sometimes decades.'
Williams, who's served 27 years, told the Chronicle that doing Shakespeare gives him a small taste of freedom.
'The great thing I love about doing Shakespeare in prison is the fact that you get to claim your body,' he said. 'You get to have that ownership of something that you thought you lost.'
It's also partly about the freedom to choose.
'Whether I'm playing a king or whether I am playing a servant, I get to choose what I get to be,' he explained. 'Having that choice is the greatest thing.'
Often prisoners mask their humanity as a survival mechanism, he went on. With Shakespeare, 'Week after week after week, you get the opportunity to see somebody's mask come off their face.'