{"id":64097,"date":"2022-10-01T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-01T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/?p=64097"},"modified":"2022-10-11T09:41:54","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T13:41:54","slug":"shifting-dynamics-through-the-power-of-theater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/shifting-dynamics-through-the-power-of-theater\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifting Dynamics Through the Power of Theater"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Shifting Dynamics Through the Power of Theater<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Maine Inside Out uses improvisational theater to help both youth and prison communities share their experiences and make an impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Katherine Gaudet
Photography by Jennifer Hoffer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Issue: October 2022<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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On the stage of the auditorium at Lewiston Middle School (LMS), seventh graders are becoming statues. A girl in a hoodie winds up a punch while a boy in another hoodie crouches, hands spread to cover his face. A girl in a headscarf cups her hands around her mouth as if calling for help. They are telling their middle-school stories with their bodies, and with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The students are participating in a program led by Maine Inside Out (MIO), an organization with a long history of creating dramatic performances along with incarcerated people. In recent years the organization has been doing more work in the community, collaborating with formerly incarcerated people to share and process their experiences and advocate for change in the justice system. The LMS program is a new venture. \u201cMiddle school is where kids start to ask all the questions: they start saying, \u2018What is it that I\u2019m missing?\u2019\u201d says facilitator Adan Abdikadir, who attended LMS himself. \u201cThey\u2019re not the way they were raised anymore; they\u2019re their own person.\u201d Noah Bragg, another facilitator, explains that the idea came from some of their incarcerated participants. \u201cWe heard many stories of people getting system-involved in middle school. They would say, \u2018This is a point when life really changed. I wish I had Maine Inside Out then.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Middle schoolers can be a challenging audience, but Maine Inside Out is used to working through challenges. They recruited participants by performing a seven-minute scene during a school assembly in March. More than 70 students signed up, and from that pool LMS faculty selected a group of 26. \u201cThere was something about seeing this very simple but strong scene around a middle-school experience, knowing actors had created it themselves, that drew the students in,\u201d says MIO cofounder Chiara Liberatore. \u201cWhatever it is about our theater spoke to the students. They saw the scene once, and they still will refer back to it. What that says to me is that they want this format to tell their own stories, and to work through what they are experiencing together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Noah Bragg started volunteering for MIO in 2016; he is now a project facilitator and leads grants and communications for the organization.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lewiston Middle School student actor Stacy Bontogo with MIO cofounder Chiara Liberatore.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Unlike most of the plays performed on school stages, Maine Inside Out productions don\u2019t come with a script. They are created by the actors, through a process that encourages participants to seek not only the expression but also the root of their experiences. On the wall of MIO\u2019s Lisbon Street office, a drawing of an iceberg on an oversized Post-it illustrates the group\u2019s process. At the top are issues the students have identified in their school: bullying, bystander behavior, targeting, snitching, and so on. Below the surface of the water are two more layers: the structures that create the patterns and, at the bottom of the iceberg, the beliefs\u2014sometimes unrecognized, often complex\u2014from which the problems grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working through those layers with seventh graders isn\u2019t easy, says Liberatore, but with continuous, gentle encouragement, they eventually deepen their thinking. The LMS students describe structures ranging from xenophobia and poverty to teenage hormones, resting on beliefs that include \u201cfear of standing up,\u201d powerlessness, homophobia, and the concept that some people are \u201cbad apples.\u201d All of this informs the creation of their early June performance\u2014itself the small tip of a much larger process full of experimentation, practice, and reflection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twice a week, for an hour at a time, five facilitators\u2014Abdikadir, Bragg, Liberatore, Tyler Jackson, and Darryl Shepherd, Jr.\u2014divide themselves between two groups of students, working on scenes to be performed for parents and friends. There\u2019s lots of creativity, but progress is slow. A few weeks before the performance date, the show hasn\u2019t yet cohered. The students come up with scenes, but instead of building on them in subsequent sessions, they tend to drop their former ideas and start over. And not everyone stays involved. A student refuses to put away his (prohibited) phone, and a teacher is called in. \u201cThere\u2019s a long list of students who wanted to get into this program,\u201d she tells him. \u201cYou need to decide. Do you want to be here, or do you not want to be here?\u201d He chooses to leave, and she escorts him out of the room. The facilitators regroup the rest of the students and keep working until the end of the period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A banner on the wall of MIO\u2019s Lewiston office was created for the organization in 2018 by the Artists\u2019 Rapid Response Team (ARRT). It combines the logos from the productions MIO toured between 2014 and 2017: Do You See Me?; Love Is Alternatives to Incarceration; Coming Home After Lock Up; When We Cry for Justice, What Do We Really Mean?; and Something\u2019s Wrong Here.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Back in their Lisbon Street headquarters, the group settles in to share highs and lows of the day. The incident with the student on his phone is troubling Bragg. It had been a hard moment, but afterward the students had done better work. For the first time, a student had returned to a previous scene, exclaiming, \u201cI know what happens next!\u201d Bragg and Abdikadir make a plan to follow up with the student who left the group (he would later return, freshly committed to the performance). The conversation continues to a discussion of structure and freedom: how can the facilitators provide enough of a \u201ccontainer\u201d to help students stay focused while leaving space for them to make their own choices?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an important problem for an organization with freedom at the root of its mission. The organization started small, when Liberatore moved to Maine and met Margot Fine and Tessy Seward, who shared Liberatore\u2019s commitment to creating change in the prison system through the arts. Their first project together came to life in 2008, when they worked with residents at the Women\u2019s Reentry Center in Bangor to create an original production. They were able to gain the necessary approvals to hold the performance off-site, at the University of Maine\u2019s Black Box Theater, for an invited audience. \u201cIt was really solidifying for us as a team,\u201d says Liberatore, and the three committed to growing the organization. At first they had no budget; they sought grants and fiscal sponsorships to cover snacks and travel. All three had other jobs and were new parents, so progress was slow but it continued. A contract with Long Creek Youth Development Center put youth programming at the center of their work for several years. In 2013 they held a series of events titled \u201cCulture of Punishment: From Parenting to Prisons,\u201d including an original work by seven residents of Long Creek. Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking<\/em>, was a keynote speaker. The events attracted press attention and accelerated the organization\u2019s growth. In 2014 MIO was organized as a nonprofit, and in 2015 Liberatore, Fine, and Seward became its first employees. Today there are 12, 8 of which are people with a lived experience of incarceration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Joseph Jackson, executive director of the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition and director of leadership development for Maine Inside Out, speaks at the \u201cJuneteenth Ain\u2019t Enough\u201d Black Lives Matter (BLM) festival organized by MIO and other social justice organizations in collaboration with the City of Lewiston.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

MIO\u2019s slow, determined growth has brought changes: more stability, more recognition, and an evolution of their message and mission. \u201cAs we grew, and the young people grew in their experience and their artistry, the message got a lot bolder,\u201d says Liberatore. \u201cWhen the participants reentered the community, they had more opportunities to share their experiences from prison, their traumas.\u201d The group\u2019s philosophy is rooted in what the Brazilian playwright Augusto Boal named the \u201ctheater of the oppressed,\u201d in turn influenced by the methods of educator Paolo Freire. At the heart of this model is a shift from authoritarian power structures to collaborative understanding\u2014from monologue to dialogue. \u201cWe\u2019re creating theater to find out what communities need, for prisons not to exist,\u201d explains Bragg. \u201cWe\u2019re using theater to balance out power dynamics, so we can have a real conversation about how to change those structures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MIO\u2019s mission now incorporates work both inside and outside of prison communities. The group facilitates projects in which people can work through their experiences with incarceration while sharing those experiences with the larger public. This summer, they launched a new project inside Mountain View Correctional Facility in Penobscot County, and have begun the process of creation and reflection that will build into a new performance over several months. In the fall they will begin hosting public events at their recently opened Lewiston community site. And they\u2019ll be returning to LMS to continue working with the same students as they move into eighth grade. \u201cI have a vision that we will be in every prison in Maine, and some jails, some group homes,\u201d says Liberatore. \u201cOur vision is to be in the communities where the most people have been impacted by incarceration: Lewiston, Waterville, Biddeford, Portland. We want to have teams of facilitators who are from those communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As the crowd dispersed at the end of \u201cJuneteenth Ain\u2019t Enough,\u201d members of MIO and collaborating organizations
gathered in front of the Kennedy Park bandstand in Lewiston for a final circle to share thoughts, feelings, and fellowship.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many people who spend time with the prison system\u2014whether as residents, employees, or interested citizens\u2014find hope hard to maintain. To continue to work for change over years and through difficulties takes patience, care, and an unshakeable belief in humanity. \u201cI want people to feel in their hearts how we\u2019re all impacted if someone\u2019s incarcerated,\u201d says Liberatore. \u201cUnless you\u2019ve been incarcerated yourself, or spent time with someone who has been, you don\u2019t really know how that feels. Being touched by an artwork can give people a way to share in that experience. Maybe it\u2019s a little clich\u00e9, but no one is free until we are all free. I want people to feel that in their body and their heart, so that they will join a movement to change things. It won\u2019t work if it\u2019s just some of us. We need everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t\t

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