Behind the Prison Walls by / Caroline Anderson

Our instructions for our visit to San Quentin made me second-guess my decision to go. Among a list of rules, we were told not to wear any blue (including jeans), orange, green, gray or yellow. We were also told to bring nothing except a driver’s license and our car keys. No food or water. Prepackaged snacks might be allowed, but “rules change daily at San Quentin.”

Once at the gate, we presented our IDs and waited to see if we would be allowed in. In spite of submitting our full legal name, date of birth, social security number and driver’s license number two weeks in advance, we were warned that we might not be granted access.

Yet we cleared the first hurdle and were allowed past the iron gate. As we approached the fortresslike building, I was shocked to see prisoners in yellow jumpsuits casually walking around, some hanging out in front of the prison entrance. This turned out to be the norm of our visit. As we approached the chapel where the performance was to take place, prisoners in blue hung around the entrance, welcoming us with the excitement of kids at a carnival. One handed me a program and thanked me earnestly for coming. As I proceeded into the chapel, the room was full of “men in blue,” some sitting in the audience, some rushing around making last-minute preparations for the performance and some practicing fencing, with cardboard tubes for swords, down the aisle of the pews. To my amazement, prisoners and members of the public intermingled freely, with no barriers. There were no reserved seating sections—older white women sat next to men in blue jumpsuits. It struck me that the visitors were largely white, and the inmates largely not.

Waiting for the performance to start, I felt anxious. I saw no prison guards around. I worried what would happen with this group of men, many of them performing for the first time. The nerves could get to anyone, but what about a prisoner? How would he react to forgetting a line, in front of a group of outsiders and his fellow inmates, whom he would have to face later, away from our gaze, in his cell? Or worse, to playing a woman in front of his peers? We learned later that the circumstances under which the cast performed were enough to throw any seasoned actor. Not only was it the cast’s first time performing the play for an audience, but it was the first time they had their props and costumes, and the second time that they were performing in that space. Their rehearsal space was less than half the size of their stage, according to Lesley Currier, one of the production’s directors and the founder of Shakespeare at San Quentin.

My fears turned out to be unfounded. Though there were a few pauses where a line had been forgotten, the actors moved along like pros, quickly continuing the scene. The men, some of whom had been raised in urban housing projects and had spent most of their life in prison, spoke the lines fluently, as if speaking a second language. And the female characters, for the most part, were played by female drama therapy students, although Belize Viallafranco took a brave and hilarious turn as the Player Queen in the play within the play. During the Q & A after the performance, when one of the inmates in the audience asked him how he was able to play a woman in front of his peers, Viallafranco answered, “I learned that I ain’t gotta do too much work on what people think, but with where I wanna go with my life, and I got to focus on that.” He also said the experience “taught me something about women, what they go through with men. They’re not appreciated, respected.”


Julian "Luke" Padgett in “Parallel Play: Original Theatre Inspired by ‘Hamlet.’”
Photo: Lt. Sam Robinson


The level of experience among the performers varied; while the majority probably had no acting experience, some were clearly skilled. The actor playing Hamlet could have played him on any stage in the world and moved people to tears. Julian “Luke” Padgett, clearly revered among his fellow players as the leader, has been involved with Shakespeare at San Quentin since 2007. He says he has acted since childhood, including in a few commercials, and was involved in a musical comedy group in Sacramento. It was when he stopped doing that that he got in trouble, he says gravely.

The company performed an edited version of “Hamlet,” because, as the dramaturg explained, the full version would run about three hours. They stayed true to the original text, and their costumes, although minimal, suggested that their production was set roughly in Shakespeare’s time. Moments of their own lives were added in, such as jubilant moments of break dancing. During the players’ performance before the show within a show, Henry Montgomery hit the audience hard with a stunningly lyrical piece of spoken word reflecting the grimness of incarceration. As he walked up and down the stairs of the chapel’s platform, red rags tied around his wrists and held out by a man on each side, his crowned head bent, I couldn’t help but picture a crucified Christ. Not only did Montgomery write this piece, but he has written many raps about his experience in prison, including “Buried Alive” and “Through the Walls.” His goal once he gets out of prison is to educate young people about life in prison.

What really moved me more than anything was the close kinship visible among this group of men, from all different walks of life, brought together under some of the hardest circumstances. During the Q & A, they all sat in a circle on the stage and spoke about their experience. There was a clear love and respect among them for each other, and a clear respect from their fellow inmates in the audience. And a pride, even among the audience members, who had no direct participation with the project until that day. When asked how the program has been therapeutic for him, Padgett said, “It’s been a gift from God to have such good people I can just let loose with and just be whatever character I am lucky enough to get.” He added, “All these people up here are really gifted people, and we are worth more than what they say we are on the daily news.” This brought a thundering applause and shouts of approval from the audience, prisoners and visitors alike, who rose to their feet. After thanking a long list of people involved with the project, Padgett concluded, “Thank you all, for this—th[is] is our therapy, without it, we would not be prepared to step out into society.”

The program was not only therapeutic for the actors, but for the audience as well. While working on “Hamlet,” the men began writing their own plays inspired by themes from “Hamlet.” They then performed their plays a few months later in September. Kimani Randall, who played Osric in “Hamlet,” captivated the audience with his story of how his mother told a judge she didn’t want her son anymore after he was arrested for robbery at the age of 10. “After hearing my mother, my hero, say she didn’t want me anymore, I felt so betrayed, and my heart broke that day, just as Hamlet’s heart broke when he felt betrayed by his mother. And I too, such as Hamlet, was imprisoned by the thought of betrayal, that anger once controlled my actions to the point where it drove me mad, and landed me in prison as a teenager until this age of 34 that I am today.” However, Randall says that through prayer, he was able to forgive his mother, which allowed him to understand that by giving him up, his mother was trying to give him a better life. In the Q & A after the performance, a man who said he was an acting teacher indicated how cathartic Randall’s story had been for him. After praising all of the performances, he thanked Randall specifically, saying, “Mr. Randall, thank you, ’cause you opened a little door here. I have someone I need to go forgive.”

Hearing the men’s stories made me realize that for many of them, their incarceration was a result of the environment they grew up in. Many of the stories described growing up in poverty and surrounded by domestic violence and alcohol abuse.

During the talkback after “Hamlet,” an audience member who said she was from California Lawyers for the Arts said she had seen the men’s performance of another Shakespeare play the year before, and that it had inspired her to start a quest to restore arts programs in correctional facilities. After speaking of her efforts, which included a collaboration with the California Arts Council to bring similar programs to some prisons in Central California, she said to the men, “You are transformed, we are also transformed. We are ashamed of the place that this state has come to in terms of overincarceration, undereducation.” Her statement brought a reaction from the audience nearly as great as the reaction to Padgett’s.

When the Q & A was finished, we were escorted out of the chapel. As I stepped into the sunshine out of the shadows of the fortress, I felt relieved. Walking past the gate where I had earlier waited anxiously, I looked out at the shimmering blue water, watercraft gliding by. Driving home on the San Rafael Bridge and taking in the stunning view of the Bay, I felt grateful to be alive, and free. But my thoughts lingered with the people I had left behind.

Summing up what his participation in the Shakespeare at San Quentin program has done for him, Angelo Falcone, who played Horatio, explained how the program has helped his rehabilitation and why he believes it could benefit others. “This was my third play. For all of you that believe, you know there’s a saying that ‘idle minds are the devil’s workshop.’ And this keeps us motivated, it keeps us interested in our rehabilitation. For me, there’s a lot of purging in this group, because I get to not be me for right now—the me, a convicted felon. I get to not be a convicted felon while I’m up here, I get to be an actor, I get to be someone else, back in the time of Shakespeare, so you know you have that humanity amongst us. It’s very therapeutic—they should have this at every prison.”


Caroline Anderson is listings editor for Theatre Bay Area.