Unshackling Shakespeare

Jangling keys and cuffs echo down white corridors while the heavy clang of metal doors thud with finality. Even the soft shuffle of shackled feet becomes heavier, harsher in the steel and concrete hallways. Here, those deemed the worst of the worst can pass years, locked alone, in a prison’s prison.

“I can understand where the expected reaction to have is just, ‘Leave ‘em there,’” said Jon Omstead, a Wabash Valley Correctional Facility prisoner. “You know, they’re criminals, just stick ‘em in a cell and be done with ‘em. But when you do that to a guy, it’s unhealthy. If he already had problems going into prison, they’re only going to get worse if you do that. And then he’s eventually going to come back out. And he’s going to come back out a very bad person.”

Into this bleak house walked a slender, middle-aged woman who knocked on steel doors with a question: “Hi. Would you like to read Shakespeare?” Laura Bates, an Indiana State University associate professor of English, showed no fear as she moved through the prison’s corridors.

“The whole prison thing isn’t that unusual because I grew up in a hard-core ghetto and so in a lot of ways I’m really more comfortable in the prison setting than I am in an academic setting because that’s just what I knew,” she said.

For more than 25 years, Bates has walked prison corridors bringing education and Shakespeare to the men and women inside, including those removed from a prison’s general population. Along the way, she’s worked her way from an Illinois county jail to a state maximum security prison and now to the federal prison in Terre Haute.

Act 1 Scene 2

Scene: Wabash Valley Correctional Facility

Laura Bates leads discussion of "Macbeth" in the segregated housing unit at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. ISU Photo/Tracy Ford

“When you come into a place like this, you’re scared. So you gotta put on a big, bravo-type thing and you gotta prove to everybody in the world that you ain’t gonna take no crap from ‘em. And that got me in a lot of trouble,” said Danjo Graziano, an inmate at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility.

With a six-year sentence in segregation, the prison’s prison, Graziano debated his options, weighing what he could do. Then Bates greeted him through the grated door of his solitary cell and introduced him to Shakespeare.

“Dr. Bates saved my life,” he said, “because I was on the border of losing my mind, literally.”

As he struggled to grasp the Elizabethan language of the Bard, he didn’t think he would find salvation.

“Couldn’t read it, couldn’t understand it. It was like, ‘Man, get outta here.’” He tossed Shakespeare aside as he paced the box-like cell smaller than many bathrooms. He listened as the solitary prisoners surrounding him spoke their thoughts on “Macbeth” into the empty hallways and to listening ears on the other side of locked doors. Intrigued by what he heard, he picked it up and began to read.

“So once I learned how to decipher it, it opened all these other doors for me because then I could break down the stories and actually dissect these stories and put them in my life,” Graziano said.

Which became the point of the Shakespeare program at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility after one prisoner found it caused him to analyze his life.

“Everything changed about me,” said Larry Newton, a prisoner at Wabash Valley. “I am a criminal. This is my life. But I don’t feel inclined like I have to do certain things to prove myself anymore either. So if it affected me, I have no reason as to that it couldn’t affect other people.”

To Bates, Newton suggested recreating his experience by prisoners analyzing the Shakespearian characters’ motives so prisoners can understand their own motives and find alternatives to their thinking.

“In other words, behavior modification, making yourself a better person,” Bates said. “That’s been the guiding principle ever since of the program.”

While in segregation, Newton wrote workbooks on Shakespeare’s plays.  Even after he returned to the general prison population, he continued to write workbooks for the plays and has now completed introductions for almost all of Shakespeare’s works. Bates has used the workbooks not only with inmates studying the Bard, but also with her students at Indiana State University.

“When I used the prisoners’ workbook in particular, it really spoke to them (her ISU students),” she said. “At first, I didn’t tell them it was written by a prisoner. I just said this is written by someone who like you was not born and raised on Shakespeare.”

Act 2

Flashback to the beginning, set in Chicago then transition to present in prison

“I found out how much we’re alike as human beings." -- Leon Benson

Bates began her work in prisons almost three decades ago to prove wrong a friend of her husband. The friend used original theater in the United Kingdom to work with murderers and other criminals.

“We had such a literal debate, knock-down, drag-out fight,” said Bates, who was working as a playwright then. She told the friend those prisoners were beyond help. Instead, she thought, he should work with first-time offenders.

“To prove that I was right, I went out and did just that,” she said.

She approached officials at the Cook County Jail in Chicago and asked to start a drama group.

“Twenty-five years later, I’ve worked my way from jail to level-one minimum security to two, three, four and now I’m level-five super max,” she said. “It seems to work, and that’s why I keep doing it because I’ve seen it have an impact.”

When Bates began working at Indiana State 15 years ago, the correction education program attracted her to the university. She helped design the bachelor’s education program that ISU offered and for the past decade, she taught in Indiana prisons as well as on campus. Then one of her inmate students disappeared from her class because he was sent to the segregated housing unit.

“That’s where I got to find out a little more about this unit and I realized for the worst of the worst, the ones who are in the most need of some sort of humanizing impact or some sort of educational opportunity, there’s absolutely nothing,” she said.

A few years later, prison officials allowed her to start teaching Shakespeare to the inmates in segregation.

“Shakespeare’s text had a deeper level to offer,” Bates said. “The inmates could offer insights that weren’t obvious on the surface. It was ambiguous and challenging enough. It engages an inquisitive mind.”

She never doubted the prisoners, who would only have access to the text without SparkNotes or other aides, would be able to understand.

“From my own background, I’m for the most part self educated or was originally self educated before I decided to go back to the university and pursue graduate studies,” she said. “As I was growing up, my parents didn’t come from an academic background so I really believe in the power of being able to educate yourself to a large extent. If you have the motivation, even if you don’t know who Shakespeare is, you can handle it.”

Men sitting in their cells discovered they could read Shakespeare. Then they found it could change their lives.

Act 2 Scene 2

In prison

"If you have the motivation, even if you don’t know who Shakespeare is, you can handle it.” -- Laura Bates

Two guards escort a shackled inmate to a visitor holding cell within the segregated housing unit. Once the prisoner is inside the cell, the guards unshackle him before closing and locking the cell door, while the inmate settles onto a chair, peering through the rectangular cuffports into a hallway where Bates sits on a folding chair.

“It’s a very bizarre, very bizarre way to have a Shakespeare class,” she said.

Occasionally, she asks a question, but the prisoners guide the conversation, throwing their thoughts to one another. The prisoners have read the assigned play and responded to questions in the workbook Newton created before the start of class.

“I facilitate the program, but on the best days I don’t speak at all other than to say hello and introduce the prisoners to each other,” Bates said.

“One thing about literature, why I like it, is when you read it, it’s like looking into a mirror and literature reveals truths about yourself and about humanity that you can’t just recognize in your daily life,” – Jon Omstead

Inmates in segregation also rewrote the plays into modern adaptations that addressed social ills such as murder in “Macbeth,” revenge in “Hamlet,” gang violence with “Romeo and Juliet” or domestic violence in “Taming of the Shrew.”  

“It’s a great way, I find, for any student to take ownership of the text they’re studying,” Bates said. “To rewrite something, even in the most down-to-earth language, you really need to be able to understand the original to be able to do that kind of translation.”

The purpose of segregation is a time out for adult prisoners. That means no mixing and mingling to enact a play they had written. That’s when the Shakespeare program expanded into the general population at Wabash Valley.

“That opened up then the idea that we could find other prisoners who could move, that weren’t shackled, that weren’t in little boxes, and they volunteered then to perform the works written by the segregated authors,” Bates said.

“I’ve also been in segregation and I know that there’s very little back there that’s intellectually stimulating and you just sit and stew,” said Omstead, who has performed in several of the productions. “I just figured that anything I could do that would just maybe bring a smile to some guy’s life back there and have him have a better day, then I just decided it was a good thing.”

The program became popular with inmates and Bates often had a waiting list for others wanting to join.

“It had that peer pressure in a positive way,” she said. “It had that positive message that you can read Shakespeare, so you’re not broken. Whereas other prison programs start from the premise that you’re broken and this is how we want to fix you.”

Bates’ work with segregated prisoners and the plays have attracted not only Terre Haute media but national media attention. An MSNBC segment on the program continues to appear on television. A Hollywood film production company has also contacted Bates about filming a movie based on the program.

The next stage has the program going national:  at the federal prison in Terre Haute.

“I’m really excited about that,” she said. “We’re not looking to just provide entertainment. We’re looking to change their lives. This program is most suited for those in trouble, with conduct issues.”

“Shakespeare can save an individual life. Shakespeare can stop a convicted killer from killing again.” – Laura Bates

After working in the Federal Correctional Institution among a more general population, Bates and a team of teachers are now working in the disciplinary segregation unit of the United States Penitentiary. They are using workbooks created by Newton and reaching out to prisoners to make changes.

Marvin Pitt, executive assistant of the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex, said prison officials became aware of Bates’ work while trying to establish and maintain a good relationship with ISU.

“We feel that through reading and analyzing the classic plays of William Shakespeare, offenders increase their academic and cognitive skills,” Pitt said. “In their weekly discussion of these plays with the other students and the group facilitators, they practice interpersonal skills.  By completing the weekly homework assignments, they learn to make positive use of their leisure time. Finally, with our focus on studying the motives behind the criminal choices of the characters in these plays, offenders also examine their own criminal motives and, in so doing, gain insight into their own character.”

And those characters have been changed. Of the 200 prisoners Bates worked with in segregation, none have been charged with violence, even after they returned to segregation.

“Shakespeare can save an individual life. Shakespeare can stop a convicted killer from killing again,” Bates said. “I’ve seen that happen more than once, and that is our explicit focus for working with the worst of the worst, the most violent prisoners in the state of Indiana.”

Act 2 Scene 3

Prisoners speak

“In so many different characters, you see the small elements of racism, you see the small elements of hate, you see the small elements of money hungriness.” -- Leonard McQuay

“One thing about literature, why I like it, is when you read it, it’s like looking into a mirror and literature reveals truths about yourself and about humanity that you can’t just recognize in your daily life,” said Omstead, who studied literature while earning his bachelor’s degree from ISU in 2007.

Repeatedly, prisoners said reflecting on characters caused them check their own images.

“In so many different characters, you see the small elements of racism, you see the small elements of hate, you see the small elements of money hungriness,” said Leonard McQuay, locked alone in the segregated cell. “Those are the same pitfalls that we find ourselves getting into that sends us to prison.”

“If you’re going to look at and judge other people you should turn back and judge yourself and see where you went wrong and how you ended up in a situation like this because it all started with the way we were thinking,” said Leon Benson as he peered out of the cuffport. “I found out how much we’re alike as human beings. At the end of the day, when we start looking more at how we are alike than we’re different, we can really come together and do some humane things and make some peace in the world.”

Bates said analyzing a character, such as Macbeth, makes it easier for the men to look at themselves and to see their mistakes.

“As a prisoner is looking at it through Macbeth’s perspective, it’s a lot easier than somebody saying to you, ‘Now, why did you do that? If you didn’t want to do that, why did you listen to your friend or your girlfriend or whatever it might be? What’s wrong with you? Why did you give in when you didn’t want to do it?’” Bates said. “So as they’re able to analyze and question these characters, it does give them that distance.”

Peering into literary mirrors, reflecting on characters’ behaviors and their own has changed prisoners’ lives, whether they are in segregation or in general population.

“For the guys involved, they do a lot of work,” Omstead said. “You get a lot of work done – emotional work. Sometimes it can become like a group therapy session and you grow as a person. Every one of us, I can see we’ve all grown as men. That’s key to rehabilitation. It’s finding your humanity instead of acting out. Just living in a cage and being told what to do all the time, you revert back to a primitive-type behavior. These programs here will keep you grounded.”

For that grounding, prisoners think Bates should be commended.

“It’s done good work,” Omstead said. “I think it’s helped people. It’s helped the men in here. It’s helped the men in the SHU (segregated housing unit). It’s helped guys out here in the population. And that’s just something that people just don’t normally do. They don’t take the time out to come out here and help prisoners.”

“She introduced me to Shakespeare and I tell her all the time, she saved my life back then,” Graziano said. “And I love her for it.”

 Jennifer Sicking, GR ’11, is the editor of Indiana State University Magazine and associate director of media relations.