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Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars
Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars
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Author: Amy Scott-Douglass Series: Shakespeare Now! Format: Softcover # of Pages: 144 Pub. Date: 2007 ISBN-10: 0826486991 ISBN-13: 9780826486998
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About the Book:
The works of Shakespeare are
rocket-boosters
to the brain and better therapy
than self-help books.
Shakespeare Inside goes behind the scenes to reveal
Shakespeare at work in the most decisive institutional context of our
time — in prisons. Based upon the author's experience of watching
prison yard rehearsals and performances, and interviewing inmates,
program directors, and wardens, Shakespeare Inside is not an
objective, dispassionate account of how Shakespeare is bastardized by
repressive institutions but offers a record of fiercely personal
experiences. We hear ex-offender Mike Smith detail how playing
Desdemona was vital to his rehabilitation; we sit in the audience of
women inmates as they respond to the all-male Shakespeare Behind Bars
touring production of Julius Caesar; and we listen to a chorus of
unnamed voices explain how rewriting Hamlet helps them to survive
solitary confinement. Shakespeare Inside probes any
assumptions we might have about Shakespeare's performative function
and asks what — if anything — is the proper place of Shakespeare
in today's society.
What people say:
"Scott-Douglass's book is
especially powerful because she captures these prisoners' lives in
all of their complexity ... Shakespeare provides beauty; catharsis;
empathy for their victims; therapy." — Studies in
English Literature
"[this book] is anecdotal
rather than analytical, but the scenes she [Amy Scott-Douglass]
describes are richly provocative...Prison, we discover, is one of the
last bastions of unapologetic bardolatry." — Times
Literary Supplement,
UK
"Where is Shakespeare now?
This question is the brief for a new series of short books from
Continuum, an enterprising publisher trying to break down the border
between academic literary criticism and books for the thoughtful
general reader. Amy Scott-Douglass's book
Shakespeare Inside based on observations and
interviews, reveals how Shakespeare really can change lives."
— The Sunday Telegraph,
UK
"The author faced her fears, a
decision, she says, that resulted in one of 'the most important and
enlightening experiences of [her] adult life.' Based on observations
and interviews, Shakespeare Inside: The
Bard Behind Bars offers a voyeuristic peek inside the prison
theatre program at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in La Grange,
Kentucky ... like an 'adventure story'." — Tidings
"Scott-Douglass's book is
especially powerful because she captures these prisoners' lives in
all of their complexity ... Shakespeare provides beauty; catharsis;
empathy for their victims; therapy." — Studies in
English Literature
About the Author:
Amy Scott-Douglass is an
Assistant Professor in the English department at Marymount
University, outside of Washington, DC. specializing
in Renaissance and seventeenth-century literature and culture. She is
the author of Shakespeare Inside:
The Bard Behind Bars,
a study of Shakespeare prison programs in the United States. |
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