Eight years ago, I began a Creative Writing odyssey at the Suffolk County House of Correction: odyssean because over the years the course has wandered in many directions, searching for the best way to present language arts frameworks in an interesting, engaging format. My students and I have experimented with a variety of novels, plays and poetry, as well as films, seeking to unplug their torrent of suppressed feelings in written and spoken words. Over this time, we have enlarged the curriculum considerably, from twelve to twenty-two weeks, from three to six Shakespeare plays, from four to twelve videos. We've also added another novel.
While the course has grown in many ways, I have always begun in the same way. Believing that people generally write best when writing about themselves, I always start by assigning an autobiographical sketch, poem or short story. This first work serves as both a diagnostic tool for assessing my students' writing ability as well as an artistic icebreaker. Most importantly, it tells me how they see themselves. Thereafter, we engage in regularly scheduled skill-building sessions, emphasizing simple and complex sentences, paragraphs, outlines and organization of ideas, thesis sentences, and concluding paragraphs. These classes are surprisingly popular, relying on students' individual and collective creativity in producing grammatically correct, entertaining sentences and paragraphs.
At times I begin the assigned readings with the works of Maya Angelou,
especially her autobiographical I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,
using the "cage" imagery as a metaphor for the imprisonment of addiction,
since virtually all my students are addicts. Her poetic prose is rich in
music and imagery, luring readers into her books, and my students, with
scant exposure to the pleasures of the written word, are intrigued by Maya
Angelou, who writes so beautifully about the trauma they know.
Because they live on the meanest emotional and geographical streets, they adopt a heavy overlay of "attitude" to mask the intolerable emptiness which drives them to drugs. Still, a number of students write poetry or keep journals as a means of expressing their pain and vulnerability. Many are gifted artists as well. One young woman, whose anti-social behavior began in elementary school, wrote brilliant, searingly graphic autobiographical short stories in between harrowing self-destructive drug and prostitution trips. Another was an inspiringly gifted actress, who played Romeo, Hamlet and Othello in one performance.
In eight years at the House of Correction, I have had only two students who were not physically or sexually abused in childhood or adolescence. Equally, nearly all my students are serious, chronic drug-users, having been introduced to narcotics somewhere between ten and sixteen. (One of my students was prostituted at ten by her older, drug-addicted sister.) Generally, emotional development ceases at whatever age addiction begins. The great majority come from families with high rates of drug and alcohol abuse and have been in abusive relationships with addicted people.
Sadly, most students have at least one, and usually, several children, who are in the care of a relative or foster parent. Many have infants and toddlers whom they rarely see. Most students are deeply attached to their children and are eager to participate in parenting courses.
Despite often cripplingly painful childhoods (one student was fathered by her grandfather and left in a trash-barrel when she was three days old), many students revere their mothers. While describing indifference or neglect, they create relationships with mothers that may not have existed in fact. A current student, writing an assigned one-page short story about some real or fictional family event, described her graduation from Suffolk Law School, detailing her mother's great support, pride and happiness. When I asked her what was fiction and what was fact, she explained that her mother had died when she, the student, was eleven.
It is hardly surprising, then, that these students are not trusting. They have had few, if any, sustaining relationships and are often harsh and negative with one another. At the same time, they may engage in romantic relationships with other female inmates, which usually end badly. There are many triangles as well, which tend to be the major cause of friction. Many of these relationships are complicated and abusive.
Poor self-image and lack of esteem are common denominators in prison populations. Women inmates are often addicted to clothing and jewelry, as well as drugs and alcohol, to assuage their inner emptiness and cover their imagined physical imperfections. They often demonstrate an almost frenzied need to acquire personal material symbols, resulting in the illicit behavior which leads them to prison.
Therefore, in addition to the underlying course theme that we all make choices in our lives and students have the right to choose better lives for themselves, we work on raising the level of sensitivity and civility in peer interactions. If people share deeply personal and emotional experiences, other class members are honor-bound to hold them in strictest, respectful confidence. It is essential to conduct the class as if it were any adult education program outside the walls of the Suffolk County House of Correction. In fact, my students say they like the class because they feel connected to the "outside world."
Since most students have not been in school for many years, and their academic and adolescent experiences were often hostile, we need to dispel these negative associations by revisiting them, discussing them and moving on. Hence the use of videos and written material based on autobiographical sources, which strike the familiar chords in my class. Opening the classroom door with the use of familiar themes helps to overcome the resistance and fear of failure which mark the students' approach to scholastic undertakings. I have chosen material that moves from the most accessible to pieces with more complex language and concepts, thereby building a "language arts frameworks framework." What follows is a brief discussion of the purpose in selecting each of the videos, poetry, novels and plays in our Creative Writing curriculum.
In writing about Dangerous Minds and their own high school experiences, students demonstrate their ability to: understand an assignment based on specific material; organize and express ideas; formulate sentences and paragraphs; use words, including a demonstration of vocabulary; demonstrate critical thinking and analytical techniques; and draw parallels between written and visual materials and their own lives. Throughout our five-month program, our regular language arts workshops stress the "1) tell them what you're going to tell them, 2) tell them, 3) tell them what you told them" method, which applies to Shakespeare's plays as well, since the Bard relies on prologues and epilogues for the same purpose.
In the film, teacher Luanne Johnson assigns the poetry of Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas, asking the class to read and discuss Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Let Me Die in My Footsteps" to show that there are layers of meaning. She prods and challenges her students to understand that literature, particularly poetry, is not passive; readers are required to contribute analytical and interpretive skills to the process of reading. Her underlying theme in discussing "Let Me Die In My Footsteps" and Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" is that even in death one may make choices.
When I ask students what they know about Bob Dylan, they generally discuss his use of drugs and have some notion of his music. A few may know about his opposition to the Vietnam War. I supply a short history of his music to set the scene for 'Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Let Me Die in My Footsteps." "Mr. Tambourine Man" is Luanne Johnson's poetic launching pad and ours because students can easily identify its drug-related imagery. As the class discussion proceeds, students realize that they can readily understand the poem's underlying themes.
Since almost all students in the SCHOC Creative Writing program are addicts, we encourage them to relate "Mr. Tambourine Man" to their own experiences. Class discussion becomes more personal and more heartfelt, and students develop verbal as well as written expository skills. They learn to analyze poetry for meaning and imagery. At the same time, they are acquiring the ability to participate in class discussions.
In Dangerous Minds Luanne Johnson invites her students to search the library for the poetry of Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan to find similar themes. Since our library does not have such resources, we supply copies of all the poetry we read. (My recent class raised questions about the existence of an after-life, so I brought copies of William Butler Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium," and "Byzantium," which led us to a discussion about the Collective Unconscious.)
Basketball Diaries is a grimmer view of adolescence, but, like Dangerous Minds, is based on a true story and thereby is more interesting to our students. Many are familiar with James Carroll and have heard of the film. As with Dangerous Minds almost all the adults in Basketball Diaries are hostile, inadequate or both. Students clearly identify their own descent into the drug cycle with Jim Carroll's free-fall into drug hell. As in everything we teach, we build on foundations of student knowledge, drawing on familiar situations and settings. In addition, we move from more readily accessible ideas and concepts in Dangerous Minds to more complicated themes in Basketball Diaries.
In The Shawshank Redemption Andy Dufresne, an innocent man serving life for the murder of his wife and her lover, teaches hopeless men to strive for something better. He and a fellow prisoner, Red, form a lasting relationship based on trust and loyalty, which eluded them in their lives as free men. Andy proves that prison bars cannot fetter a free spirit and that hope endures even in the most desolate places.
We read the book How Stella Got Her Groove Back and see the film,
allowing students to compare them, with some conjecture about the reason
the two are so different. We explore the profit motive in film-making,
with its heavy emphasis on fantasy rather than reality. Students often
note that the Whoopi Goldberg character is absent from the book but appears
in the film to increase viewer attendance. Most students prefer the book
to the film because the book seems more possible and believable. Since
the author, Terri MacMillan, is married to a much younger man, students
learn how to adapt reality to fiction. Both the novel and film serve as
excellent essay and short story material, providing a sound segue to Romeo
and Juliet,
another story about socially unacceptable love.
For people embarrassed by their gap-riddled education, it's essential to breach the barriers which separate them from "well-educated" America-- thus, "Shakespeare Comes to the Slammer," so called to deflect students' profound belief that Shakespeare is insurmountable and incomprehensible. When I assure students that Shakespeare's audiences were equally divided between the indifferently educated middle-class, the better-educated nobility, and illiterate folks out for a good time, they seem genuinely surprised. Shakespeare, they think, wrote solely for scholars and rich people. Regrettably, some scholars share that belief as well.
William Shakespeare wrote plays to be performed, not read. Therefore, we study only those plays which have a good film version, which we view before we read the play. The intensity with which students are engaged by the videos speaks to the degree to which they comprehend and are beguiled by the material. After we see, read and write about each play, students perform selected scenes, immeasurably increasing their understanding and appreciation of the Bard and their own abilities. As with all actors, my students must consider motivation, not only of the characters they play, but also of the other characters in the scene. Acting vastly increases students' understanding of the plays, as well as their fluency and self-esteem. One student, summoned by a guard to return to her unit after class, responded, "I come anon, good officer!"
The 1968 Franco Zefferelli production of Romeo and Juliet, with which we begin the Shakespearean portion of our odyssey, is probably the most accessible of the Bard's film adaptations, intensely romantic, with appealingly vulnerable young leads. Once convinced they can both understand and respond to the language, my students are eager to explore other plays. They recognize, as have four hundred years of audiences, the relevance of his themes to their own lives and enthusiastically engage in discussion comparing characters and plots with their own experience. In his recent definitive work, Shakespeare: Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom suggests that the Bard influenced Sigmund Freud, who quoted and analyzed Shakespeare's characters. As I frequently assure my students, Shakespeare was a first-rate psychologist. We respond to his characters because they are us. The overwhelming majority of my class are impulse-driven and desperately craving affection; therefore, we read plays dealing with impulsive behavior and its consequences, as well as plays about betrayal. In each case we explore the character's choices and offer alternative suggestions. In fact, when we study Romeo and Juliet, I ask students to write a "Dear Abby" response to the young couple suggesting ways to deal with their "star-crossed" love.
For many students, "Shakespeare Comes to the Slammer" is their first
exposure to the stimulation of intellectual discourse--of supporting an
argument with specific textual and experiential references. Because the
concept of discussion and debate is foreign, it is necessary to establish
ground rules in courteous communication.
There are several important themes in the play which are relevant to our students, including the cataclysmic adolescent "love at first sight"; adolescent gang rivalries over turf; impulsive behavior; irresponsible and/or unsympathetic adults; betrayal and despair. As students discuss and write about these themes, they begin to understand the genius and universality of Shakespeare, whose works transcend cultures and centuries to reach us. We also see three film versions of Romeo and Juliet, to underscore Shakespeare's adaptability to every age: the 1968 Franco Zefferelli version, which is the best and with which we begin; the 1936 version with Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer; and the 1997 Leonardo DiCaprio/Claire Danes edition. (We also see West Side Story.)
On the other hand, most students have no idea of historical timelines. That Shakespeare wrote four hundred years ago and that his plays are often set in earlier periods has relatively little meaning to students who haven't really studied history or literature. Therefore, we view two short videos, Shakespeare in Stratford and Shakespeare in London, to set the physical and historical scene for the plays and their author.
It is important to set the social scene as well. We explain that in Shakespeare's time women had few protections. Wealthy women were their father's property until they became their husband's property. Adolescent girls were married as early as thirteen--in fact titled girls might have marriages arranged for them at birth--and romantic love was not usually a criterion for such unions. Elopement was unthinkable. Marriage was a contract uniting two families for their mutual strength and benefit. Absolutely essential to such unions were the bride's large dowry (which might include gold, silver, jewels, property, fine linens and cloths, china, crystal, and servants) and her virginity (another reason to marry off one's daughters at the earliest possible moment). To protect her virginity, a girl was under the constant surveillance and supervision of her nurse (usually a woman who had literally nursed her in infancy and remained to care for her until her marriage) or other older female companion. By contrast, males were encouraged and expected to have sexual liaisons throughout their lives.
Wealthy girls were taught to read, possibly write poetry and learn a foreign language, sing, dance, play an instrument, embroider, run a large household, and be decorative. They never attended school or university, and never had professions. In the unlikely circumstance that they remained unmarried, they languished at home doing their parents' bidding. If they were lucky, ordinary women--and men--might have had the scantiest local school education, where they learned to read, write and do some basic arithmetic. Men of Shakespeare's middle-class background had a better education, including Latin and possibly a foreign language, as well as history, geography and mathematics.
Since most people could barely read--if they read at all--and there were no movies, radio or television, the theater and the local drinking place were at the center of their entertainment universe. (Bear-baiting, cock-fighting and executions were popular, too.) Shakespeare wrote for a mass audience. He borrowed from existing stories, legends, and history to create his plays. Women were forbidden to act on stage, so men played female roles as well. In Shakespeare's plays, we note that heroes and heroines, as well as villains, have fatal flaws. As we watch and read the plays, we discuss the defects in reason or character which led to these characters' downfall.
A note on texts: We use The New Folger Library edition of Shakespeare's plays because they have the clearest notes and provide explanations and definitions on the left-hand page, opposite the text, minimizing frustration for students unfamiliar with Shakespeare's vocabulary. Students should be reassured that William Shakespeare wrote in modern English and that his work is perfectly comprehensible with a little help from the line notes. We also explain that Shakespeare uses verse whenever an important character makes an important speech. Servants and lesser characters do not speak in verse. Moreover, since there are no copyright laws governing the performance of the plays, there is great latitude taken in adapting them, which will be obvious to students as they view the three versions we have chosen as well as the West Side Story derivative.
Although Franco Zefferelli took a number of liberties with the text (most significantly, excluding some of Juliet's soliloquy as she takes Friar Laurence's potion and Romeo's stabbing of Paris in the last act), he produced a visually and emotionally faithful version of Romeo and Juliet. It has a freshness and beauty which captures the fifteenth-century mores as well as the sympathies of the modern viewer. The youth, fragility, and appeal of the two leads underscore their impetuous, impossible love. Olivia Hussey is believable as the radiant thirteen-year-old child on the brink of womanhood. Leonard Whiting is every girl's dream of fifteen-year-old boyish perfection. We understand the web of social forces which entangled and doomed them. In Zefferelli's version, we move from the luminous joy of the young lovers to the inevitability of their death. Often, when Romeo's servant, believing Juliet to be dead, overtakes the Friar's messenger bearing the truth, someone in class will suddenly announce the imminent death of the young couple. At the same time, when asked why Shakespeare omitted the scene in which Romeo kills Paris, students conclude that it interrupts the tragic flow of the story. Usually, students express dismay that Romeo and Juliet die at the end, which invites a discussion about the dramatic conventions of comedies, tragedies and histories. This is an opportunity to contrast today's popular drama with the formalities of the late fifteenth-century drama. The women are shocked to discover that in much of Shakespeare's repertoire, hero and heroine are likely to die.
When the 1936 Romeo and Juliet was filmed, Norma Shearer's husband, Irving Thalberg, was head of MGM studios and decided to give her an "important" role. Norma Shearer and her co-star, Leslie Howard, were far too old for their parts, which might not have mattered so much on stage, but was quite obvious to the cruel eye of the camera. In addition, Norma Shearer was hardly a Shakespearean actress. Moreover, because Romeo and Juliet were portrayed by older actors, Mercutio, Tybalt, and Benvolio all had to be much older as well. Thalberg's version of Romeo and Juliet relied on costumes and sets that never saw the light of day or night in the fifteenth century. Norma Shearer wore 1930s Hollywood-style dresses with sequins and tulle. Leslie Howard was too old to climb the balcony and had to use a step stool. On the other hand, the Thalberg version adhered more closely to Shakespeare's script than the Zefferelli production.
In the third film, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes are the late-1990's star-crossed pair, living in a world of drugs, punks, gangs, transvestites, porn, AK-47s, chaos and destruction. After the poetry of Franco Zefferelli and the 1936 "Busby Berkeley meets the Bard" version, this last offering is a jolt to the senses, producing laughter and shock where there should be foreboding and sadness. On the other hand, it certainly proves my oft-repeated point that Shakespeare survives in every time and adaptation.
West Side Story, the 1961 Leonard Bernstein musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, is problematic for some students who cannot accept the convention in which characters burst into song and dance to express feelings. Taken together with the 1997 Romeo and Juliet, however, students recognize the universality of the story. I ask students to consider the following: In comparing Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to West Side Story, what difference does it make that Tony and Maria are members of warring ethnic groups rather than warring Verona families? Does this version seem more believable than the others? If you did not know the story of Romeo and Juliet, how would you feel about this film? How do you feel about the fact that Maria survives in this version? Which ending do you prefer, the ending in Romeo and Juliet or the one in West Side Story?
With this we move on from Romeo and Juliet to other plays. [Part II of "Shakespeare in Jail" will appear in the next issue of this newsletter.]
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Martina Jackson has been a volunteer teacher at the Suffolk County House of Correction for the past eight years. Before that she was a reading teacher in the K-12 system.