April 17, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
Photograph by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times
All the world may be a stage, but opportunities to perform are rare in prison.
Enter Bruce Wall, executive director of the London Shakespeare Workout Prison Project, who sees acting as a way to help American convicts develop traits that can help them rebuild their lives after prison.
Mr. Wall, who recently staged a show by inmates at the California Men’s Colony, in San Luis Obispo, has conducted acting workshops at 94 prisons across Britain, as well as in other countries.
In Britain and the rest of Europe, he’s produced new plays with Shakespearean themes that have prison inmates and professional actors treading the boards together. Among those who have participated in the Prison Project are Kenneth Branagh, Richard Dreyfuss, and Al Pacino.
“Like any education, it engages,” Mr. Wall says of acting. “Many of these people have never had a chance really to feel engaged within a group and to really be a player. Many of these people have never had a chance to play.”
Several ex-prisoners have become actors or begun writing after participating in the workshops, he says, and others say they now read plays or have learned to enjoy theater.
The London Shakespeare Workout raised about $190,000 last year, mostly from ticket sales and income from its acting workshops for large corporations. Mr. Wall plans to use the same financial approach as he starts a U.S. branch of the charity.
Later this year, he will return to the Men’s Colony to stage another production and tour prisons throughout the state.
Here, Men’s Colony inmates rehearse an Elizabethan dance for their play.
