Sing Sing inmates put on a play (Oedipus Rex) - hey, there can be redemption in prison

Oedipus Max: Four Nights of Anguish and Applause in Sing Sing – by LAWRENCE DOWNES

OSSINING, N.Y. -- To enter a maximum-security prison to see inmates put on a Greek tragedy — in this case “Oedipus Rex” at Sing Sing — is to descend into an echo chamber of ironies. An ancient story of murder and banishment brought to life by banished murderers. Imaginary horrors summoned in solid flesh by men whose own stories are horrifying and real.

It’s a lot to ponder as you hand over wallet, keys, watch and train schedule at the prison entrance. As for your illusions and misperceptions about inmates and prison life — those you surrender inside.

I went to Sing Sing with the play’s director, Sister Joanna Chan of the Maryknoll order, whose headquarters is not far from the Hudson River bluffs on which Sing Sing has hunkered since the 1820s. Sister Joanna, who is petite, Chinese and in her 60s, had been working with the inmates since June, and Friday’s performance was the last in a four-night run. The cast and crew, serving time for murder, rape, robbery, assault and other crimes, called her Grandma.

We walked through long, low corridors to the auditorium, called the Chapel, with a high ceiling of exposed steel beams and the grimy yellow light of bare bulbs. Nuns and other visitors from town nibbled cheese cubes and drank coffee from paper cups. A few mingled with inmates, easy to pick out not by their air of menace but by their green pants.

There were jitters in the room, not in the audience but in the cast and crew — the bustling nerves of any amateur production. Previous nights had gone well, I was told. The play had even won over B-block, a brutal crowd. Tonight’s show was for guests, and the final chance to shine.

I met the assistant director, an inmate with a white skullcap and deep-set eyes who went by his Muslim name, Bilal. He told me how faith helped him to face his guilt — murder — and how theater polished the tarnished gem inside. Like other inmates I met, he had the taut intensity of someone gripping his beliefs tightly, so as not to let them get away.

Sing Sing, the former home of Old Sparky, is not widely known as a progressive place. But its theater program is a rarity in New York prisons. It relies on a nonprofit group, Rehabilitation Through the Arts, and the savvy benevolence of Sing Sing’s superintendent, Brian Fischer, who considers its virtues self-evident.

The inmates chose “Oedipus Rex” because they had done more than a dozen productions — including “Jitney,” by August Wilson — and wanted something really difficult. Sister Joanna persuaded them to choose Sophocles over Shakespeare, since it was more accessible and would fit in the maximum allowed two hours.

She took me backstage before the curtain rose. The cast and crew held hands in a circle and prayed for a good show. Jocasta, Oedipus’s wife and mother, was an actress from New York City and the cast’s only non-inmate. She told everyone how proud she was. Oedipus, with tongue-in-cheek pomposity, demanded silence and offered encouragement. “Please, let’s kill ’em,” he said. We all knew what he meant.

Then everyone came in close to lay hands on Bilal’s head and to give the program shout: “R.T.A.!”

The room went dark, gloomy music rumbled, and the lights came up on the temple pillars and plague-wracked citizens of Thebes, who wore bedsheet togas over T-shirts and green pants. Oedipus entered, his raised arms N.F.L.-thick, his dreadlocks wrapped in regal gold ribbons. The cast was almost all black or Hispanic, except for the Priest, a lanky bearded Shepherd and a dark-haired fireplug of a Messenger No. 1.

This production went to Greece by way of the five boroughs, as the ancients were summoned to be asked important questions about a foretold murdah. But the men hit their marks precisely, and moved and spoke with elegance and conviction. If they were haunted by the play’s resonance in their lives, they didn’t show it. They seemed like people trying to produce art, and in so doing to somehow assert an identity better than the one — murderer, rapist, robber — that had overwhelmed all others.

As I watched, I wondered what it would be like to be defined by my own worst sins. It struck me that when people are locked up for horrible crimes, a lot of goodness and beauty necessarily get locked up too. It also seemed that the Theban society onstage — though afflicted by plague, vengeance and divine cruelty — was probably gentler and saner than the one the inmates knew. Its members clearly cared for one another, and were not numb to grief.

When Oedipus made his final entrance, blinded and lurching, from stage left, the Chorus trembled, and shock and sorrow rose on cue in the hushed auditorium, just as it has for the last 2,500 years.

Sister Joanna told me later that chorus members had been reluctant in rehearsal to touch one another, though they eventually got past it. Oedipus, a man of conspicuous self-control, had particular trouble losing it for his final breakdown, when he collapses into the arms of Creon, his uncle and brother-in-law. He didn’t pull it off until Monday’s dress rehearsal. On Friday, Sister Joanna thought she saw real tears.

After the curtain fell and the cheers and applause finally died, the crew joined the cast onstage, with officers quickly posted on the left and right steps. The inmates crowded the footlights, straining for the hands of audience members who filed slowly past to say thank you, great job, wonderful show. Clearing the room of visitors in small escorted groups took nearly an hour. The inmates never stopped chattering and hugging, their faces shining with relief, and with the yearning to savor every moment before the spell was broken and they were taken to their cells.