Shakespeare Behind Bars, Jean
Trounstine. Read in May 2011.
Being
an English teacher I have long harbored the dream of actually reaching out to
troubled students and helping them find the inspiration to get their lives
together. Working with women in prison
has been a thought. It probably won’t happen for me. It did for this author.
Jean
Trounstine gets a teaching job in a New England women’s prison. The inmates are
not into Shakespeare but Trounstine experiments. Focusing on six women, who
come to the classes mainly to pass dreary time, she writes about how by putting
on The Merchant of Venice these women work their way through past
traumas and tragedies, how they protest, refuse to continue, complain about the
language, deal with ornery prison guards, and then after months of hard work,
lots of aggression and anger and tears and heartbreak, they actually perform
the play for their fellow inmates. And prove a lot of things to themselves and
the skeptics.
There’s
a touch of the Hollywood feel-good to the book but it is nevertheless a good
read and shows once again that Shakespeare is for everyone.
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