When the sun comes through my window
and sets the yellow sheets dancing
like a watery fire,
I feel the sadness of needing someone.
She goes to dinner with her husband.
But I am left alone on the phone,
trying to reach out.
I don’t make my request fully understood.
But I want to be adult
about it. Not the needy child
My parents left me to be.
Alone: waiting for them to come home.
I am a grown-up now.
With a husband of my own.
And friends that say “goodbye.”
The moon passes on passes the time on
To me the moon passes her time
Time to move on time to move, moon
Time to move the clouds blow pass
Dark clouds
Dark historic clouds telling
The lonely tale of a child left alone
Clouds rolling over the city
The city doesn’t know me
Doesn’t know why I am here
Looking down on her with all her
Lights blinking, staring back at me
Staring blankly back at me:
Who are you?
You do not belong here
The twinkling city between
two bridges does not recognize my face
I am a visitor
I was brought here on my own accord
But now I see the moon
The lights, the dark ancient clouds
They calm and arouse me
soothe and stimulate me
I am sucked into a stunning trance
I stare until the night is done and I wish
I were asleep or dead.
The problem with the moon is that is so bright
I thought I left a light on
I searched for the switch
But could not switch her off
(The heat turns on in this house when nobody’s cold
Nobody is cold because nobody lives here)
The people who live here are gone
And I remain
Still and alone
Sleeping numbs the pain like ibuprofen
Tomorrow the pain will be back
So I’m waiting
Waiting for the moon to wax to change
Waiting for the clouds
to finish their path through the city
Waiting for time to move on
Time to move, moon!
Waiting to find myself home again
Home in his arms
His safe arms of Love.
“Keep it as factual as possible.” says Kim Taylor, Marin Shakespeare Company’s PR manager, as I ask for advice on writing about my experience performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream with inmates at San Quentin Prison. I want to make sure I am as factual as possible, so I look up the word “fact” in Webster’s Dictionary. The first definition is (I’m not kidding), “fact: a deed; act; now esp. in the sense of a ‘criminal deed’ in the phrases after the fact and before the fact.” So, keeping this definition in mind, I write about ‘before and after the fact’ of my first rehearsal in San Quentin.
Before the fact: My husband is against the idea. He tells me they will hold be hostage. He knows something will go wrong. I pooh-pooh his comments as the normal nay-saying attitude he can sometime stick to. I state my rational defense: “I’m an artist! I am allowed to be in dangerous places to create art.”
My first rehearsal in prison ends before it begins because I left my wallet with my stage manager the night before and have no identification to get into the prison. (A full background check is done before I am approved for this project months in advance.) The prison is locked down because of in-house riots during our next scheduled rehearsal. My husband doesn’t like the sound of that. Finally, everything comes together and my first rehearsal actually happens. It is raining. I can’t wear my raincoat because it’s blue. (Long-term prison inmates wear blue.) I don’t want to carry my umbrella because it’s green (prison staff wear green), so I walk unprotected in pelting rain with Suraya Keating, our Director and Drama Therapist; Lesley Currier, actress and managing director of Marin Shakespeare Company; and Suraya’s dad, who is visiting from New York.
San Quentin is beautiful. It is pulsing with famous folklore. The prison is on a hot piece of real estate: estimated land value of $600 million, directly on the water, overlooking the San Francisco city skyline. I wonder if the inmates have a view from their cells. We walk from the parking security gate to the initial prison security gate. Five inmates in yellow rain-jumpers are outside watching us. They are huge, dark and mean looking, exactly how I imagined they would be. One yells something my way when I pass. I keep my gaze straight ahead. We enter the initial security gate. Bars and metal and cages! It is totally cool! I feel like I am a kid seeing the inside a secret military cave. I am excited. I try to calm down because hey, it’s a prison, not an amusement park. But I can’t help thinking Hollywood movies with heroes and bad guys and a brewing gun scene. We finish the first identity check, are then ushered into the next area which is totally a huge cage, then into the next area which is also decorated in a ‘prison cell’ theme. Once we exit the three exciting and very jail-looking caged rooms, we are in.
We walk through an open garden space toward an education building where rehearsals are held. No one is outside because of the rain except for a couple of blue-clad inmates who follow us into the building. Our rehearsal space reminds me of a classroom in my elementary school. The inmates clear the long tables and tiny chairs to make space for us. They greet Suraya enthusiastically and are excited to meet her father. “Someone’s going to be on her best behavior today…” they tease. I am in a daze. I worry about what they will think of me. Will they like me? Or will they dismiss me as a blond-haired, blue-eyed, yuppie-know-it-all-white-pansy?
After the Fact: We leave the education building with the prisoners. Leaving them behind feels like abandoning a starving puppy to die. I want to give them my phone number and address and meet them after work for a game of Scrabble and a glass of wine. After the fact, I feel sad and my heart is drunk. It’s a weird mixture of feelings. I have eleven new friends today. They show me their fears, their voices, their performances, their hearts. I take a journey with them to their imaginations. We play the energy-ball game. I look them square in the eyeballs and tell them I love them. I listen to their huge growling lion voice, their high-pitched fairy voice and their rolling R’s. I laugh with them and joke with them and overhear the encouragement they give each other like precious jewels. We’re friends!
Rehearsal started in a circle with Suraya asking the men if they could relate to what their characters are struggling with. Michael* could relate to Bottom’s identity crisis. He is also trying to figure out who he is: after fifteen years of prison, is he an inmate or a human being? Nathaniel related with Thesus’ struggle over when to use his power and when to use his sensitivity. Carlos identified with Oberon being misunderstood by others. “How do you want people to see you?” asks Suraya. “I’m actually a nice, easygoing person,” he replied. James confessed that he, like his character, wants to find true love.
During the rehearsal I, like Hermia, struggled with trying to figure these men out. I couldn’t do it. Who were they? Were they actors? Were they criminals? What were they thinking? Like Hermia and her struggle to understand Lysander, I could not read their minds. I could only read the smile on their faces and trust that the words coming out of their mouths were true.
*Inmate’s names have been changed to protect their identities.
My second Midsummer’s Night Dream rehearsal with the inmates at San Quentin is very different. We are no longer in the small classroom but in an art studio. The walls are filled with portraits of blue-clad prisoners, San Quentin’s wired landscapes, and one female figure. The room is even smaller and every shuffle echoes with ruffles of sound. I find a small fish tank bubbling with water but no fish. Just as I forget were I am, an inmate fetches an officer for me so I can pee. The policeman places the padlock in my hand and walks away. My own rebellious brain starts ticking: What if I leave it the staff bathroom open? What are these guys going to do? USE THE TOILET?
Perhaps the change in energy is because Denise, the editor from playshakespeare.org, is visiting. The men have their flirt on. Three or four times guys make sure that Denise is comfortable, has somewhere to sit, “Oh? You want to stand? Well, here’s a chair if you need it…” Today feels like we are on a playground with a group of rowdy 7th -grade boys. They are giddy and unstoppable with their constant giggling and chatter. I don’t know how to react. The teacher inside me wants to tell them all to shut up and listen. But Suraya never loses her cool. Unruly behavior falls off her like water off a duck’s back. I see she’s under a lot of pressure. Today is our second to last rehearsal before the performance and we are still blocking scenes. Inmates still have scripts in their hands! I’d be asking for blood, but Suraya just laughs nervously and reminds the actors that the performance is next week and lines not memorized will be cut.
This is not a normal rehearsal process. A normal rehearsal process is 5 weeks of rehearsal 6 times a week and a 7-week run of the show. This is 10 weeks of rehearsal once a week with one show if we are lucky. The main obstacle is to get everything approved by the prison warden. There is a lot of bureaucracy, paperwork, politics and a strong hesitation to allow the inmates do anything besides be in prison.
Which brings me to my next topic: Sex, Sex, Sex! Love, desire, and sexual attraction weave in and out of the text in A Midsummer Night’s Dream like a brightly colored basket. Thesus’s last line begs us all to go do the ‘wild thing’: “Lovers, to bed; ‘tis almost fairy time. This palpable –gross play hath well beguiled the heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed…” But in San Quentin, we are not allowed to touch each other in a passionate way for the staging of this play. I don’t think we can even hold hands. The only touching we do is taking each other’s arm as we proceed to the wedding chapel. I witness an interesting moment during rehearsal when the four lovers are watching the play within the play. The inmate playing Demetrius needs to pretend that Helena is in the chair next to him. He holds her hand, strokes her hair, pretends she’s afraid and clinging to him, hides her ‘eyes’ when the lion roars. Lysander and I have so much fun watching him play with his imaginary Helena, that we start playing with her too.
I start to wonder if sexual imaginings are essential to survival at San Quentin. Sometimes, sexual jokes climb in and out of our banter (calmly kept PG-rated for the women present). But at one point, Bottom is on the ground pretending to be dead as we work on blocking Thisbe’s death (played by a male). “Lie on top of him!” suggests one of the inmates, but another jokes that it just wouldn’t be appropriate for a man to lie on top of another man because “he’s not staff.” This insinuates that the only men-on-men sex taking place in the prison is instigated by those who actually work at the prison. I try not to act stunned.
As we ignore the overtly sexual banter Shakespeare playfully wrote within A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I wonder about the sexual lives of these men. Are they in love? I notice an inmate wearing a wedding ring. How does he work this out within himself? In the play, we all live happily ever after with the partner of our choice. Not our actors; they are sentenced to a life without the joy of safe, intimate physical contact. Tonight, when I feel the warmth of my lover’s body as I scoot under the sheets, I am acutely aware of the eleven men in my life who are deprived of this customary blessing.
By Linnea George 1996
Her pencil poised and head erect,
she looks around the classroom…
mind began to wander as she thought of what was beyond her.
Something is supposed to happen!
Just when, and how, and why?
The teacher kept on talking, as she heaved a heavy sigh.
Maybe she can be a movie star!
Where mis-used grammar wouldn’t matter…
where she’d climb so high the successful ladder!
Life in the classroom is just so dead!
It wouldn’t matter what the teacher said,
If pronouns, she decided to resist’ war and famine would still exist.
Periods, parentheses and Quotation marks
flew above her head…
Ellipsis points seem to describe where here unknown life is led.
These things outside must not prevail.
Must not tear up.
Must not eat me.
Like a worm slowly chewing a hole in my heart.
I must find the silence within.
Silence that feeds and sustains me:
Be still and know that I am God.
Stillness is so hard to find.
We, like the little red spider,
Keep changing directions,
keep running side to side.
Finding a place to rest can be difficult.
Especially when my brain is a little red spider,
especially when my heart is a little red spider.
Be still and know that I am God.
Quiet rest like a river, like a stream,
Slowly blending,
Slowly flowing in.
No time for others.
Just time for myself today.
Can’t learn Spanish.
Can’t stretch an arm out.
My neighbor will have to wait.
Because I’m hungry.
hungry for rest,
for space, water and time.
Hungry for silent laughter and to be alone,
hungry for the time to breathe.