"Writers behind Bars"
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| Stars range from 5-1. |
Teachers
(bad, good, worn out, inspiring, and every shade in between) have long been a
staple of novels, films, and plays. Just a week or so ago a professor friend who’s researching the
history of plays about teachers accompanied me to see (as part of
FringeNYC) the excellent solo piece, RIPPLE OF HOPE, written by and
starring Karen Sklaire, a heroic educator telling of her own experiences using drama as a way of reaching difficult children in inner city New York
schools. Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott’s WHORL INSIDE A LOOP—whose title
refers to a fingerprint pattern associated with talented people, but who show less
desirable traits as well—is related to Ms. Sklaire’s piece in its imaginative
depiction of its writers’ personal experiences teaching in another
potentially tense environment, a men’s prison in upstate New York, where writing and performance helped hardened criminals make personal breakthroughs. Convicts as well as troubled schoolkids can often be rehabilitated through the arts.
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| From left: Daniel J. Watts, Derrick Baskin, Chris Myers. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
In 2011 Mr.
Scanlan and Ms. Scott, well known, among other shows, for their successful collaboration
on EVERYDAY RAPTURE (2010), a semi-autobiographical
musical in which the Tony-nominated Ms. Scott played a version of herself,
signed up to teach a personal narrative class to 13 inmates at Woodbourne
Correctional Facility through a volunteer organization called Rehabilitation
Through the Arts. The class involved getting the inmates to write and perform
brief biographical monologues for presentation under the title Theatricalizing Personal Narratives. What
began as a one-day workshop proved so successful that additional classes were
given once or twice a week for several months.
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| From left: Ryan Quinn, Sherie Rene Scott, Nicholas . Christopher. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
The abundance
of stories, both tragic and funny, painful and poignant, that emerged, and
which touched even prison bureaucrats, eventually took seed in Scanlan and
Scott’s creative imaginations and blossomed into WHORL INSIDE A LOOP, an intermissionless
100-minute mostly fictionalized amalgam of their experiences. Five of the
inmates (four of them eventually paroled) whose stories are integrated into the
play—Andre Kelley, Marvin Lewis, Felix Machado, Richard Norat, and Jeffrey
Rivera—are credited for “additional material” and earn a piece of the profits
for their contributions. Still, ethical and legal questions, described
recently in the New York Times, linger.
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| From left: Ryan Quinn, Nicholas Christopher, Derrick Baskin, Donald Webber, Jr., Daniel J. Watts. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Although a
talented performer, Mr. Scanlan eschews acting here in favor of codirecting
with Michael Mayer (HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH), while Ms. Scott plays a
character seemingly based on her but called “the Volunteer.” The directors have had designers
Christine Jones and Brett Banakis clear the Tony Kiser Theatre’s capacious
stage area to reveal the bare walls, painted in drab prison gray, with a large
wooden platform and metal chairs serving most needs. A rolling green blackboard
stands up left.
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| Daniel J. Watts, Chris Myers. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
A trimly attractive blonde with an insistently peppy personality, Ms. Scott's milky presence
(someone calls her “Whitey McWhite”) contrasts starkly with her African
American costars (Derrick Baskin,
Nicholas Christopher, Chris Myers, Ryan Quinn, Daniel J. Watts, and Donald
Webber Jr., all excellent).
This orange-jumpsuited ensemble plays not only inmates (each a convicted
murderer) but prison personnel (including an acting female warden and a nun who teaches voice and speech) and the
Volunteer’s circle of outside family and acquaintances (including Hillary
Clinton in a hair salon). With slight alterations of their uniforms and caps (costumes
are by ESosa), the actors, playing both men and women, and creating the sound
effects themselves, display their versatility through distinctive alterations
in body language and speech; despite the laughs they draw, however, these bits—especially
the racial and gender-crossing ones—tend to be distractingly exaggerated.
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| From left: Donald Webber, Jr., Chris Myers, Derrick Baskin (sitting), Daniel J. Watts, Nicholas Christopher, Ryan Quinn. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
The Volunteer—a
Broadway actress doing community service as restitution for a drunken driving
conviction—thinking she’d be working at a women’s minimum security prison, is
surprised to learn where and whom she’ll be teaching, and of the various
security measures she must follow; a running gag about the metal in her bra and
the security guard’s inability to say “bra” quickly dries up. Fearing for her
safety, and declaring that having a son gives herself something in common with her students, she kicks into gear her revved-up, cheer-leading energy
(whose relentlessness, combined with insufficient vocal variation, eventually
grows wearying). Quickly, she gains the surprisingly accommodating prisoners’
confidence. A mantra of confidentiality is established: “What Happens in This
Room in Prison Stays in This Room in Prison,” or, as an inmate scrawls on the
blackboard, W.H.I.T.R.I.P.S.I.T.R.I.P.
Eventually, each inmate gets to perform
his monologue (one involving a boy of 16, in prison for 14 years but mentally
still 16), and various responses emerge, including the fear of “glorifying” the
crimes so openly described. The horrific social conditions that led to their
misdeeds are, of course, laid bare. Still, it’s a stretch to accept the premise
that each inmate is not only a gifted writer, but a powerful and polished performer, even if
sometimes in need of the Volunteer’s coaching and encouragement.
However,
drawing attention away from this world of incarcerated literati is the self-absorbed,
occasionally clueless Volunteer’s own story as, breaking the W.H.I.T.R.I.P.S.I.T.R.I.P. rule, she casually gossips about her experiences with her outside friends (including her husband, an attorney, a producer, and a gay "hair therapist"); despite her rationalizations, she’s prepared to use them for her own aggrandizement. These outside sessions allow some discussion of the issue of prison reform, but, in the cartoonish behavior of Ms. Scott's smug white friends, they tend to dissipate what’s happening behind bars.
occasionally clueless Volunteer’s own story as, breaking the W.H.I.T.R.I.P.S.I.T.R.I.P. rule, she casually gossips about her experiences with her outside friends (including her husband, an attorney, a producer, and a gay "hair therapist"); despite her rationalizations, she’s prepared to use them for her own aggrandizement. These outside sessions allow some discussion of the issue of prison reform, but, in the cartoonish behavior of Ms. Scott's smug white friends, they tend to dissipate what’s happening behind bars.
With WHORL
INSIDE A LOOP my professor friend has another interesting, if flawed, play to
add to his collection.
Tony Kiser Theatre at Second Stage Theatre
305 West Forty-Third Street, NYC
Through September 20
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
New York TimesNew York Magazine
Variety
New Yorker (essay)
The Hollywood Reporter
Time Out New York
Daily News
New York Post
Deadline
AM New York
Theater Pizzazz!
