Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the PG&E podcast series.
This is Jovana speaking, and I'm delighted to be joined today by some very special guests who will be discussing an exciting
project revolving around mid-year and titled The Media Project Theatre for Incarcerated Women HIV Circle.
Introducing the projects and the project members and leading the discussion will be Nancy Rabinowitz,
professor emeritus of comparative literature at Hamilton College and a specialist in Greek tragedy and modern literature.
She is the author of Anxiety Failed, published in 1993 and Greek Tragedy published in 2008,
and co-editor of many other books amongst Switch From Abortion to Penny Rosti,
teaching difficult topics in the classics Classroom Publishing 2014 and Sex in Antiquity Exploring Sexuality and Gender in the Ancient World,
published in 2015. In recent years, Nancy has also been an active member of the human from inside the Prison Education Project,
in which she teaches at Mercy Correctional Facility.
So everything you see and thank you for being with us today.
Well, it's a great pleasure to be here and to be with you and to introduce you to Rhodesia Jones and Angela Wilson.
Hello, hello, hello. Rhodes says an activist artist and the director of the Project Theatre for Incarcerated Women HIV Circle and.
And she's been a member of the company for 25 years. Rhodesia and the women on the project have worked out a method that articulates
and performs personal experiences of trauma for hearing healing purposes.
The company, which takes its name from the infamous ancient media, uses art as a form of social activism.
The performers own stories of incarceration, of living with HIV, aids of addiction of abuse,
violence and aggression are often framed by stories from ancient myths, which have been the basis of dramatic literary and visual arts for millennia.
For example, they used the media and their show reality is just outside the window and others around Pandora,
Demeter, Empress Stephanie Anana Systems, Undersheriff Mike Hennessy, the women, professional actors, dancers,
social workers would develop shows based on the incarcerated women's own writing and perform them
in theatres in San Francisco because they had to be visible at all times because of incarceration,
they developed the use of a chorus. All were on stage for the whole show.
Since Mike's retirement, they've continued to find ways to work with and on issues of incarceration.
I've been privileged to work with the project in progress over the past 10 or so years, and we have been doing workshops this past week.
In Utica, refugee girls responded to the Trojan women under their direction.
It was very moving to see what the the project method elicited from those kids.
The 14 year old's, etc. So let me turn to protest and then Angie with a few when I will be leaving
questions and I'm sure they will be because once you get these guys going.
Yeah. So my first question is why miss my classics like, you know, antiquity?
So specifically, if you can talk more than we have lately about what are the women see,
for instance, in Pandora or Demeter and for Stephanie, did they identify with the data or do you?
Well, yes and no. But one of the wonderful things about our process, this is where it gets a Jones,
and our process and methodology is about one encouraging a love of literature language.
And so we read we read the stories. And as the director, I bring in actresses, dancers, writers, storytellers, I mean,
English teachers as a way to introduce the incredible woman really set to writing into reading its reasoning.
And then yes. And lastly, they do it as far as the day,
and they were very down on the day for maybe you could tell that story because these people want to curse the day approaching.
You know, the story of my day of being the day I murdered her children in revenge?
Well, in my own experience as an artist working with the California Arts Council,
which is how I began this work in jails and prisons now around the world is that I've been asked to come in and teach aerobics to LA,
to incarcerated women at San Francisco City Jail.
And one of the early moments I had was encountering a woman that obviously was incredibly traumatised to the point that she was almost catatonic.
And I'm inviting her to come to the gym and work out with me as some of the other inmates.
And all she said was that I'm waiting for God.
Only God can judge me. And I was just kind of stunned at What does this mean?
What does this have to do this long sitting in a jail cell in the back of this seven floor jail?
So I go back and I asked the deputies about this particular person and they tell me that she had smothered her daughter in revenge,
basically in a cocaine haze.
Her husband finds out that she's been out scrounging for money to continue to do cocaine after he introduced her to cocaine.
Because keep in mind, this is a woman that was that was poorly educated and had a lovely life until she was introduced to this white powder.
And all of a sudden, she's obsessed. So she's out the streets during the day while he's at work trying to find money for drugs.
But the bigger story is, is that she is only accused.
Told that he to go away and he says, I want you gone, I want my baby out of this, this particular mess.
And I think as he was going to take the kid, he wanted, the baby he was going to, but he just said, I want you gone.
And she acquiesced, I guess. And but when he left, she smothered the baby in revenge because it's what women can do.
So my own position on the day, if I stand with her in certain ways.
But to answer the question of how would the women, how did the women around me, incarcerated women hear and accept this story?
They were outraged. They were just totally outraged that somebody would do this to their own child.
And at the same time, I as the leader and also the woman who brings the story.
I say, Wait a minute, what are the ways that we kill our children?
One of the ways that we can do that when we abandon our children and we choose drugs over our children,
we choose a man over our children, we end up incarcerated and our children are left with our mothers and grandmothers.
This is an evil murder. And how different are we than my?
So I opened up the story. It opened up. It gave them reason to to look at it, to gaze on this story.
So they felt the same way about when do you when you got to. So that led you to want to do this play?
Or did you do something with it? Yes. Yes. Yeah, it was simply a yeah.
And I had some practises that Aegis Cooper had me for was Jake Rose.
She was one of the members of the company. She wrote a piece, A Modern-Day Tale, The Tragedy of my dad Jackson,
which was about black women and the projects in America and dealing with an abusive man and her again madea.
Jackson's one real recourse was that she could throw her children off and she jumps mercy into play.
They all jump off of the bridge. Yeah. How did you work through the rage?
Because I know you've told me that they wanted to tear the league to beat what was happening in the church.
Debra, Debra, Tara report. They were so angry.
Yeah. The anger was as ancient as the story. So did this transition from that with madea through what happened for me as the
visiting artist in the jail and witnessing the women and witnessing Debra that crushed,
dishevelled, downhearted mother who has killed her baby?
I'm witnessing the deputies taking her to the showers, and the women are one another.
They want to get her. They just want to. They want to beat or they want to tear it apart.
And all of it was so painfully human and a lot of ways.
And I started to make notes on women's reality in which is,
what's the they show that we that I made with this woman was reality's just out the window.
So did they ever go around about? We did see some of your position or what moment when we got the group together that ended up in the theatre, right?
The group that ended up as a cast for this particular show?
Yes, they did. Yes they did. They were they they had a lot more sympathy for for my day.
And they really didn't like Kryon, who had come to tell her that they wanted her gone.
They they just go, who also was one of my star actresses in that.
Yeah, she was wonderful at telling throwing all that.
You look, there's a moment when the derby, which is a wedding, I guess a wedding that I can't get for the bride that that that he has.
Jason has taken and everybody had a great time throwing out the drug in the like.
And we got to get some speed and we got to put some fire in it.
We got to put some of this. And we have this back.
And now I'm just like, Yeah, yeah, we got to get it together.
And that was a it was a wonderful release for all of us. I think it was all announced that I was brought back to kind of a love fest.
It was midday after sales. You know that scene where she screamed as an activity fan?
Yes. So were you in the group at that point?
So were you there for Pandora or Demeter?
Oh, I've been there since 1998, so my first show was slouching towards On Again,
which was Pandora and ended up opening night, opening about all [INAUDIBLE] breaks.
Yeah, because I was teary. I was A. I was curiosity.
I think you made maybe. Oh no, I was confused, confused, and my character was confused and came out.
The real, you know, you are very clear, but you have a very dim view, as always, running into myself.
Do you remember what it was like working on that show?
Oh yes. And so the chairman of the This is Angela Wilson.
Oh yeah, I know that's fine. Yeah. I mean, in 1998, I was incarcerated for the umpteenth time.
And Miss Jones came into the jailhouse and with Sean, her social worker in prison in that area.
Yeah, resented that. We were going to be able to do that if we could have a rehearsal and we could possibly go to a theatre and perform.
I mean, you know, my mother was really good. She had me in acting classes.
I had visions of being, you know, soap opera star when I was a girl.
And so this was a thing.
And then Paula Jones actually has written a lot of music and produced it with culture, honesty and Vanessa Jones and Idrees, Oakamoor.
She was in jail at that time and we was I was in the bathroom and she's like, You got this for?
So I was like, OK, OK. And so and also when you know and miss Jones walks in the room, you're like, Holy Moly, who is this?
And I want to know, I know, I want to know this person what she's doing and being reminded that I'm not just a junkie.
I am many other things and was many things before this. And and so in the jail, in the inception of The Mindy Project for incarcerated women,
we were handcuffed and shackled and taken to the theatre after a three or four month intensive rehearsal with all the aforementioned players.
You know, the actresses, the social workers, the English teachers, that the reading.
And it was actually because I grew up in a farm in Idaho.
It actually the first time I was introduced to black women writers because, you know, I had never had that in my public education.
Just out of curiosity, did it present a problem, people coming and going with sentences?
And or were this a long haul kind of story because I know in the jail, you know, maybe so things have changed.
Yeah. You know, that was a long time ago. I was twenty three years ago. So back in the day with a little with a little bag of dope,
you're going to sit still for a minute now unless you have blood on your hands, you know, second chance to get released.
But some people were not. You're not like that. No child.
And what message do you get those three months?
What Miss Jones would do is you look at all of the characters in the room and say, Hey, do you have a test date?
When are you getting out really clear about how that was happening?
Unfortunately, now because of the nature of crimes.
We're not able to handcuff shackle and transport women to a theatre because of the nature of their crimes.
But this is back in the day. And, you know, the beating heart on drugs and all of that stuff.
And so that's how she would sift through, yes, all and and systematically back in the day.
And he's describing, you know, if we as the the management of the theatre company or whatever we would look at, you look at a person date.
Have they been sentenced to the county if they have been sentenced to the county for a year,
then they could be in the play because we wouldn't have to worry about them being leaving.
But yes, and you are in a position to say that the crimes got different and it was very different.
It wasn't. It wasn't easy to actually decide who could be in the play and who couldn't be with that message, right?
And became a whole nother thing. And and also the sheriff in the beginning, Mike Hennessy, was much more involved in.
And who gets on, who goes and the deputies that were there that were there in in the inception.
They were very invested in and this this did a fine casting women working, you know,
and anybody that's from California, particularly San Francisco, knows that, that we tend to be otherworldly.
The society has very, you know. Yeah. So like upstate? Yeah.
And the deputies went, I would put the deputies do their own rehearsal audition,
but to have them be a part of the crew that drives the point that you made last night,
there was always somebody with you at all times, with the deputies onstage while they were the deputies, were they flanking the stage?
And also we were told to to keep everybody up on stage, which is so which just as I look back and think about making theatre, you know,
you got to deal with the authorities and say this is going happen and this is going to happen and interests Greek mythology,
the Greek chorus right now. And as. Well,
whatever the lady that was elected in the women escaping it was to protect them
because anybody finding out that some woman that got been released to jail,
even if it's just an easy to go to a play and she had maybe it hurt somebody in your family or something like that.
The police were worried that they would try to get into the theatre and live in a whole nother show.
But no sideshow. Yeah, yeah. But God bless.
San Francisco, California, the D.A. chanted state, because they were very proud of work that really saw it as be.
The sheriff himself really believed that art saved lives.
And the more we talked about something like mass media because we think we know something about it because we're all kind of educated with it,
with Hercules, Prometheus, you know, these are things that we hear in high school, you know, and things.
And now you hear more about the man. Jason? Yeah. You know, they're not.
Yeah, you don't hear about the women as much. But the share was really invested in how can we take an art project based on a theatre and
and the the classics and put it on women as a way to help change their lives and really need?
And yeah. Is there something that women saw in these characters?
And do you remember? I mean, I know it's a long time ago.
I've been doing the research lately, so it's much more in my mind if Pandora or I'm thinking about Pacifica and here,
yes, her a mother who maybe could have felt like she let her daughter down.
I mean, one of the things that we did, I'm speaking out to the audience with some students in a writing class was nobody told her,
which is a very moving piece of the media project.
And of course, you know, for so for many, it's out there with her friends and picking flowers,
and nobody tells her that that's always the place where it happens. So little girls do this.
So I just wonder if you remember any way that people resonated to the miss.
So one of the things that's really great about Rhodesians methodology is, like she said earlier, is that we read the myth.
We break it down. We understand it's our understanding that when Pandora with her, with her nosy nature.
Right, right. And a beautiful and ran in the world. But she had this one thing she couldn't stay out of everybody's business.
Right. And when that box opens, all [INAUDIBLE] broke loose.
And so we can all understand all of us. The incarcerated women can totally understand that we're just skip it along doing whatever we do.
Trauma Bay, I've been there. Lots of stuff happens right.
And there we are like, what the [INAUDIBLE] is happening in all the major show up?
And then we end up incarcerated, leave our children, and maybe we're a junkie or whatever.
And everybody like what happened to her. And then nobody told her that she could be ambushed socially, psychically, spiritually.
And that one was slouching towards Armageddon. A conversation on race.
So Angie, that's me being the only white girl that ended up staying throughout the whole show and me being taken to the theatre.
And that was really, really,
really like it changed my entire life and changed everything I thought about stuck because I grew up in Idaho on a farm is very, very, very white.
Borderline Idaho is the home of the Ku Klux Klan. Like, we had a very clear the way that I have been indoctrinated around beliefs, right?
And then here I am in this place in jail, I actually wrote a piece about hair.
My hair, your hair. Yeah, yeah.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. Because, you know, white girls with their hair, they want to curly.
They prefer black women. When they want to get out, they straighten their hair.
They burn it. Yeah, right?
So is the been I was just and just like, you know, all of that, all of the ways that we're the same and always wear the same, you know?
And so that was very exciting. And then I remember writing a piece about being just a no and not a name and the ways that systems, you know?
And I remember when Angie first came, you know, when I first started to observe her,
there was another person seeking that Martha F Effingham, the Mojave Desert, come in to work with somebody around me.
And Martha asked that if there was an established appeal that you could take some of.
It's a conversation on race. She's about the people that you would take.
And it made you black that you take it in. And he said, Yeah, I would, but only for a short amount of time.
And people got mad at her and she was able to say that max the world is down black people.
Which is such an amazing revelation, it wasn't like she was being racist to me,
this is that the real social observation and it became a part of the conversation as well.
You know, and I think in India, I know dear only to me,
but it only opened up other people's eyes around about what are we talking about here as well as for me.
When we're talking about this conversation on race, reminding other people in the jail that everything is not Jesus,
you know, there are all kinds of religions, people who never thought about it.
People have never thought that you could. You could be Muslim. You know you and you can even be, which got so much of the basis of who, the who,
who are in jail, the black people and those that can all of a sudden deal with the fact that,
you know, there are Muslims, there are Catholics, there are, you know, there are all kinds of families.
All of this and all of this was discussed as well. And in the jail in the middle of making this piece about a candid conversation on race.
Yeah, it was. It was. I remember it being also just thinking about it.
Now you have this idea about this race theory and who you know what, what kind of racial kind of.
I mean, his history is, is a tie in schools, and that's where we literally like I knew about Martin Luther King,
but I had never been educated like that in the way when I sat in the front row with Miss Jones and just all of this,
you know, very clear American history. But had never been tighter.
And one of the beautiful things about the museum project that people don't know
when they're not inside is we began to eat together and we were able to ask,
Do we all like to be in the same bed area? Well, I mean, you know, we're not always allowed that, but we became like, We, you're travelling now.
Today, we are a collective of women and we're a democracy until we're not because we know who is in charge.
And it's not as it's Rhodesia Jones. However, that's how she has taught us is to love each other.
As women, we travel as a collective. We all go to the same place.
We all stay together. We all do.
This thing is true, and it's a brilliant teaching because it gives you the opportunity to navigate the world in a whole other way.
And so what happened to it organically?
What happened to us is we were sisters, and of course, we argued and carried on, but we were no longer interested in our sisters, do we?
Yeah, but we were no longer interested in harming each other, and that had never happened,
you know, in the jail because we're always interested in Ahmadinejad. It's just the nature of the beast, right?
So we we all put down our weapons and we sat together and we loved each other.
But back to the mass also, you know, with Stephanie Pandora my day, even just to name the three different most apparently come into my life.
All of a sudden, we're looking at the ancient history of work and the struggles of those men.
Yeah. So do you get pushback about using these ancient texts?
I mean, I know it's hard because you're the boss,
but I wondered whether because sometimes students do come into my tragedy class and say, What do I want?
You know, students of called, Why do I want to read all these dead white guys?
No, no. It was just simply reading your reading in jail, you see.
And it wasn't. It wasn't always largely white.
Black women at the centre of it was like all of us, even even the deputies themselves were from different places.
And I can't stress enough how wonderful it was to have us all, as Angie say.
We were encouraged to be the guys who were allowed to to be together in and outside of that rehearsal of the multi disciplinary rule.
So we didn't get that kind of pushback. I mean, I think people, if they didn't like it, they just didn't come back.
They just didn't come back. But I think even those people on the edge, they still in me, like, was God do with me.
That was much what the question like. That's got the guy to do well, but also what I do with women.
And I thought it was, yeah, but I lifted it, lifted up the whole history of women in the world.
But I also think it's not. It's not. So let's just break down a myth right now.
Women, incarcerated people, ladies and women for this, for this interview are hungry for education.
We're hungry to understand. Women love to connect.
We are. We are, you know, we're we're connecting with people.
And so the idea that that somehow that the incarcerated women would not want to be bothered isn't true because we're always sucking up everything,
no matter what, even if I can't read if I'm in that room, you know, working at your.
To understand what the story is when you walk out and you're going to be left with questions like how does this relate to me?
And then you have, you know, I wrote Dustin Jones and Idris Cooper, any superannuation?
She turned, you know, the Jackson. Yeah.
And so it's to make it make sense, right? And so when you leave, it has something to do with that.
Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. So I have a couple of other questions, but I think I want to merge some of them.
So why performance? And you know, what kind of what difference does it make?
So you go out there in shackles, albeit in ways you do it?
And what does that do? The process of making a piece and then kind of programme like yours really effect mass incarceration.
I mean, I think a lot of the money comes from the promise of fixing recidivism or the hollow.
I mean, I know you guys, but the larger question is how how does it affect the female population in this?
And I think that we're moving toward we're still moving towards that.
You know, I mean, as is the world where women are equally balanced as men in the prisons and prisons and but also in the world,
just like women's rights and male rights, that kind of thing.
And I can't remember what it was. You know, I always just wanted to rephrase the question that you used.
Sure. I'm sure, because I doubled it up north. So it was why is performing the what?
What dimension did ballet when you were able to do it and then how this programme like yours effect mass incarceration.
So I'm assuming, you know, the performative part of it has something to do with addressing massive question.
Well, I think on a whole nother level, performing its performance, people coming in and looking at the future,
what you know, and women are at the centre of this ritual, which spoke a lot to do.
It drew attention to the fact that there were so many women at the county jail, you know, so it educated the audience, the public,
yes, about who was there and also and the way we made work was that women got, you know, even are in the major advantage, you know?
You know, I wrote, that's a common perception. You know, this became this guy and even dismissed me.
Oh, my God, something about it. We never use Pandora to say, but that was like we we could name.
I mean, now that commie come.
And, you know, so so one of the things that I know happens here in performance, and I'm sure it is now what I'm thinking about my own question.
Mm hmm. There's a kind of accountability. We're doing this show.
I'm depending on you. We're sisters. And that ups the ante.
I mean, and that's a great point. So maybe that also helps in in whatever behaviours you're going to need when you get out.
Well, I see Nina, I think it's so many things and I think it's different.
And I think it's different for everybody.
But when so first of all, someone's listening and it starts here and then we go to the theatre, people come, they pay to hear what we have to say.
And when you, you know, we all know it's cathartic to be able to share our story.
So when I go back to the programme? Yeah. So it's reforming.
It's cathartic, adapted to the ritual we belong. We all want someone to see us.
And we all want to belong to something, right? And in those moments that you feel that way, you don't feel the oppression and the isolation.
And you know, you're just a number. You don't feel none of that, especially when you have rejected Jones as the leader.
That's a in. I see you. I love you. Even though you're really, really messing up stuff, you know you abandon your children.
We don't like hee hee and ha ha about it's not OK. Let's talk about why it's not OK because, you know, like Miss Jones said the data.
We kill our children. But you know, and metaphorically for a myriad of ways.
Yeah. And I think mass incarceration, I think I think that's a cute buzz word.
Yeah. I think that the only thing that's going to stop mass incarceration is an incredibly racist government.
You know, the new Jim Crow? Yeah, I think these are how mass incarceration happened.
I think that we need to begin to be understand that when somebody serves their time and when they walk out,
they get an opportunity to make it an opportunity to go back and get their licence that they had before they went in there.
They get to go back and redeem themselves, if you will. And what we do as a society, especially violent crime when she.
Once you've been convicted of a murder, for example, say you did 25 years, I can assure you you've changed.
And when you walk out of there, most people find some kind of spiritual practise.
When you walk out of there, you're human must usually at night, or unless you're just some crazy and violent that you'll never get out anyway.
But you walk out and you're carrying is like a really heavy suitcase, and it's all it's like a mark on your forehead.
You know, now I've done this thing and I can't get past it.
And so what I do a lot in my own work outside of the media project is it's a mindset to write it just because I have a really long rap sheet.
Does it mean you can tell me when I can and can't do? But you know, not everybody carries that with you.
And that is where we are now back to just being direct contact inside and getting people to buy into it.
It's as simple as reminding people that you said you can.
You work with us, you have an obligation to yourself as well as us to move through on this, this more beautiful thing, the creative process.
But the other side of that is we live in a new Jim Crow.
When we look at people being released from prison, how are they how these assistants?
They're not, you know, women when they come out with a double whammy burden.
Oh, I totally fail the culture. I failed myself. I failed in my family.
And woe is me and lazy. You don't necessarily get your children back.
So you're being punished for all, for all time. You know, and and as empty to saying until we can change this attitude of this racist government,
this racist culture, this racist element that we live in and has incarceration.
Yes. And be willing to say, OK, you did your time.
Now, how do we help you to get a leg up and to move on?
It's like the last part of that is that people don't realise formerly incarcerated people are really hard workers.
The formerly incarcerated people have more integrity than most normies have because they've been through a process.
Right. We we are really incredibly smart, amazing people.
There are so many people behind bars right now that could change the game, make it change.
The WHO was right and put. They're locked up.
And when they get out, we're not going to give them an opportunity even here.
I mean, especially if you're black or brown, really enjoys bail on suspicion and you have it.
How can you ever earn the respect of the culture?
Because it's like what? You know, how do you how do you live? How long must you play defence?
What are the standards look like? You know, and the whole idea of reparations right now is on the air, which is a know that we should be looking at.
How are our current black people going to be compensated?
But what we what we build in this country with that with with no money, with nothing, with our bodies and our souls.
And it's like the companies, the money that has been generated in this country.
So much of the wealth was began on the backs of slavery.
And nobody's able to deal with that. Nobody is going to deal with the reparations that should be figured out.
How, how, how does the rest of my life for the rest of my, my life, but my life, my children, my grandchildren and great grandchildren?
It's just go to school for free, you know, medical care.
Instead, it's going to be dealing with medical disparities amongst black and brown people.
The pollution is worse than the roots of so. Yes, exactly. So we should probably wrap up,
but I would want to give you guys an opportunity to talk about what's happened since those days of the big performances.
And now is the pandemic's time.
You've shifted your strategy to my analysis using this because he told me that you use doping and we use that body, we use the Phoenix.
Yes, even though it's zero, even on Zoom, yeah, we still have switch to zero.
So just briefly, what I know it's in corrections has been a new project.
Yeah. And then before that, you were still working in the jails, right?
The truth was, yeah, so here we are. Here we are, here we are.
And we've had we've been dealing with re-entry, giving ex-offenders, been getting women to write about re-entry with their energies,
the Phoenix and she wrote, And it's been it's been really interesting online zoom creating, you know, creating a magazine online.
So what were you working with incarcerated women on Zoom? Yeah, they're ex-offenders.
They're out, they're out. So we let a lot of the re-entry workshops.
I was born that we had children scattered around, and so we call them Lisa of Lisa Frias is what is presumed clean.
So she's smart and then they bond on myself and she obviously missed John and Felicia and Felicia.
She was a AIC and re-entry workshop. What we did is because I had such a great connexion to formerly incarcerated people.
So we we wanted to have family first, really like just about as its re-entry.
However, what we ended up getting was some really, really strong.
Women that had been incarcerated now have their master's degrees and everyone's got their children in buying homes and all that.
And so they all made all of them afraid. I don't do this. I don't write.
I don't, you know, I don't perform and do any of that.
And so it was brilliance and we did use the Phoenix.
We use this hero's journey. The use, some other adapting destiny of your methodology.
So culminated into a performance on Zoom, all on every Thursday night for like 12 weeks or so.
It was, I was. It was incredible. And then we have I see, like we said, that California direction.
Yeah. And so that was a fabamwo on visa free, the obviously missed jobs and our my sister, Felicia Scaggs.
And so we all talked and that was it. That was less informative and more about how to navigate the system.
So that was professionals who were looking towards it, being one of those people that wanted to and you know, it ran the gamut.
We had a formerly incarcerated gang member that then twenty five years and then we had, you know, or people that were humans that were abused.
And it was also initiated by the state of California really smart group that the state
of California is trying to figure out how to how to use the artist relationship.
I think, and I think that I can proudly say that we were we're very instrumental in that when the day approaches that we've been around so long.
So we were invited and we look to women given a certain amount of money and agreed to be.
It actually was like experimental with that. But what can we do to set?
What kind of systems can we set up? Almost double what we have.
We had to. I don't know how many weeks did we do.
I think we did 12 and we actually ended up having part of the part of the grant was that we would make a document seen.
It is beautiful. Obsidian's put it together.
We threw some music on top of it and we just we scoured through all these hours, you know,
and we came up with a really clear document that can tell you how to go in jail, what you expected to jail.
It going to do what not to do. You know that get down?
What is it manipulation as a superpower? I created this curriculum.
And yeah, it was. It was really good. I'm super proud of that.
Or did it? Yeah. Then we have Lisa and she, you know, she's been because she's a school teacher.
She's been teaching on Zoom since pandemic, and so she was able to come and do the.
So we look so good to, you know, because we're all smart and she made us look good, you know,
so mindful of this moment, I wonder if I have a question that elicited something you would like to say to these.
You know, this is the archival performances of Greek and Roman girl and their mailing list.
So is there something you'd like to say to those folks? Well, I would just I would just like to.
I would just like to say that I feel like the kind of the kind of work that we've been involved in that we appreciated.
We being the media project. This is definitely a set of theatre arts for the 21st century as well as it is.
It is an honour. And look, you really are talking about HIV.
Yes.
As well as we spoke a lot about mental illness, just as Andy's work has gone on, even past what I've done as an art teacher now she's in the jails.
We need to have, I think, people who have an art based to understand that they can go to these places.
And I think it's that it's invaluable to where we want to go in 21st century and classes should and are up.
And that's a part of the whole for lack of a better word penal system.
It's as ancient as the penal system, and I think it's a way to engage people inside in large ways because I was so directions with painters.
We had theatre directors, you know, and as bad as we were sitting and talking and talking to amongst us,
you think about the other forms that have grown out of the struggle.
Hip hop, all of them speak to speak to the whole idea.
At the ancient history is now everything, everything that ever lodges is again,
everything it ever was old is new again, you know, and I feel like the classics really are part of that.
The plot of this is who's going to six. They become even more on a class.
You know, I mean, it's to get it. I'm really curious as to see what will be done with really classes in and starts.
And they will be. And I think we should all encourage that. That happens because it gives a masterclass.
It gives them a new place to class. And so what is your email address?
Students Road, Jones, R H O J O n e s 009 at gmail.com.
Thank you. I think that if you got incarcerated people, yes, and you want to change the game for people that Mr. Podesta Jones in the theatre,
a Medea project theatre for incarcerated women is a really good and HIV circle is a really great place to start.
We've been teaching here in Hamilton, brought us with her and wherever she's teaching us how to teach her methodology,
and we've been doing it for quite a while. So it looks like it could be a future. We're going coming back in October to write Cary Grant.
You're going to tour now. Right?
And so if you would like to get a hold of us, it's at our H O J when you don't stay away and he has oh nine at gmail.com.
And also our website is w w w a day approaches.
That thing is Dr. McCord. Thank you very much.
Just stop and thank you for that. Yeah.
Over and out.