Prison Performing Arts
PRISON PERFORMING ARTS
Training: July 10 - September 4, 2007; St. Louis City Juvenile Detention Center; Mel Watkin, Instructor
Exhibition SITE #1: PPRC Photography Project Gallery
October 16, 2007 - January 13, 2008
Exhibition SITE #2: St. Louis Public Library Schlafly Branch
October 23 - December 8, 2007
Website: www.prisonartsstl.org
Prison Performing Arts (PPA) is a multi-disciplinary literacy and performing arts program dedicated to enriching the lives of adults and young people in the Missouri criminal and juvenile justice systems. They are best known for their compelling productions of Shakespearean tragedies performed by detainees. In the summer of 2007, I taught a group of detainees at St. Louis' Juvenile Detention Center to photograph four PPA workshops in acting, Afro-Caribbean dance, West African drumming, and Capoeira (a Brazilian martial art that disguises itself as dance).
After an arrest, youth are held at the Juvenile Detention Center until their court date or disposition. Their stay can range from a few days to several months. On a normal day, the facility houses 70-100 youth who stay at the Center for an average of a month for crimes ranging from shoplifting to assault. Youth attend Griscom Detention Center School, a special unit of the St. Louis Public Schools, and participate in after-school workshops and seminars offered by non-profit groups. One group that significantly enhances their lives is Prison Performing Arts (PPA). Four special month-long PPA workshops were photographed by a group of 15- and 16-year-old young men who lived together on the Detention Center's Unit H. They called themselves the GGSG, or the Gimp Green Shirt Group: "Gimp" after the free photo editing software we used and "Green Shirts" because of their green uniforms. After learning the basics of digital photography, the GGSG shot the last session of each PPA workshop, trying to capture the essence of each teacher's gifts. Each workshop was taught by a professional artist, including actor Dominique Gallo, Afro-Caribbean dancer Leslie Arbogast, West African drummer Kunama Mtendaji, and Capoeira practitioner Tebogo Schultz. In order to protect their privacy, none of the detainees' faces could be photographed. Many photos were shot from the chest down so as not to include faces. Gimp software was used to "swirl" faces when they appeared in photos, and the group also spent several hours researching and drawing masks to scan and paste over faces that needed to be covered.
During Photography Project training, the 15- and 16-year-old young men of GGSG photographed Detention Center facilities in order to show all aspects of their lives at the Center. In one session they made a list of the positive and negative aspects of detention. Surprisingly most of the group listed only two things on the negative side: bad food and the inescapable fact of being detained. On the positive side they listed: most of the staff, speakers, Prison Performing Arts programs, seminars, learning to stay out of trouble, watching movies, going to the gym, and the discipline (not only did they have to act in a responsible manner, but so did everyone else). One youth wrote that detention programs had shown him "...to respect himself more" and encouraged him "to make changes and do better in life."
--Mel Watkin, Instructor and Director
PPRC Photography Project
PARTICIPANTS: 15- and 16-Year-Old Young Men
The group changed throughout the summer,
but the core participants consisted of:
George
Glenn
Jerry
Kwame
Patrick
Robert
Ryan
COMMUNITY PARTNERS:
Prison Performing Arts
St. Louis Juvenile Detention Center
St. Louis Public Library, Schlafly Branch