Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis of Incarceration

Ashley Lucas is Associate Professor of Theatre & Drama and the Residential College at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, and Former Director of the Prison Creative Arts Project. She and Jodie Lawston co-edited the book Razor Wire Women: Prisoners, Scholars, Artists, and Activists (2011), and they cofounded a blog by the same name. Lucas also write the play Doin’ Time: Through the Visiting Glass, which she has performed as a one-woman show since 2004.

• Foreword Heather Ann Thompson (University of Michigan, USA)AcknowledgmentsPart I Prison Theatre: Strategies for a Better LifeIntroduction: Journeys in Prison Theatre1 Theatre as a Strategy for Community Building2 Theatre as a Strategy for Professionalization3 Theatre as a Strategy for Social Change4 Theatre as a Strategy for HopeConclusion: Glorious Beings Live HerePart II Critical Perspectives5 Dancing in the Wings: Does Prison Theatre Offer a Radical Containment or a Pedagogy of Utopia? Selina Busby (The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama , UK)6 “The Actors Have All the Power”: Angola’s Life of Jesus Christ Stephanie Gaskill (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA)7 Citizens Theatre, Scotland, Facilitates Changes in Life Directions through Creative Arts Mediums Neil Packham and Elly Goodman, (Citizens Theatre, UK) 8 Bad Girls, Monsters, and Chicks in Chains: Clean Break Theatre Company’s Disruption of Representations of Women, Crime, and Incarceration Caoimhe McAvinchey, (Queen Mary University of London, UK)NotesSelected Bibliography on Prison TheatreSelected List of Prison Theatre Companies and ProgramsNotes on ContributorsIndex

This powerful account of theater, both in prison and in the free-world, eloquently reveals that those two worlds—and the people who inhabit them—are not distinct. This is an ethical, moving act of scholarship that matters.