Acting with conviction

This spring, photographer Andy Nelson and writer Mary Wiltenburg traveled to a Kentucky prison, where inmates were putting the final touches on their production of a long-anticipated play. For the next two weeks, they were audience to an unusual drama, both offstage and on.

Titus Andronicus, an early Shakespearean play about rape, murder, and revenge, isn't popular with critics; the poet T.S. Eliot called it "one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written." But performed by rapists, murderers, and other offenders at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex, the play takes on a new life ... and, as it does, so do its actors.

Act 1: behind bars

Jerry Guenthner, "G" to his friends, charges onstage, dressed in a burlap tunic. In front of a painted backdrop, he launches into the opening lines of Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus": "Noble patricians, patrons of my right, defend the justice of my cause with arms."

Except for a high fence, just visible through a window off stage right, this could be a community-theater production. Except for the tag on his pants - "J. Guenthner #096355" - G could be a free man.

He and the 22 other players and crew members for this production are inmates at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in LaGrange, Ky. It's a medium-security prison, laid out in white cinder block and wide lawns - like a community college, but ringed with watchtowers and razor wire. Built to house 485 inmates, it is home to 975 men, most convicted of murder, rape, armed robbery, or drug charges. In a place like this, spoken by a man with a life sentence for killing a police officer, the words "right," "justice," and "arms" sound different than they would on a high school or professional stage.

No ticket window or ushers have greeted guests arriving for tonight's performance. Instead, they have cleared a vehicle checkpoint, two metal detectors, and four locking doors. Now they're packed into rows of stacking chairs in the visiting room.

Sitting up front, G's family watches intently. A few rows back, Demetrius Burris's mother cranes to see her son, playing a prisoner of war. When Leonard Ford begins his lines as a Roman tribune, his father straightens.

In a back corner, near the guard station, stands Curt Tofteland, director of Shakespeare Behind Bars, the program responsible for this production. He's also starting a new season in his regular job as director of the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival.

Shakespeare Behind Bars grew out of an effort to bring inmates and middle-school students together to discuss literature. Curt contacted that program's director to suggest a performance component. Six years and four wardens later, the discussions have lapsed - but the performances endure.

Not that it's been easy: Previous wardens were not all supportive of Curt's efforts, and the current warden admits his program probably wouldn't be around if it cost anything. Curt raises money to pay for costumes, and volunteers his time. He says he does it because acting can transform lives - particularly those of prisoners.

"I let the guys choose their roles," he says, "and you'd be surprised how many choose to act out the very kinds of things they're in here for." The inmates have told him those roles allow them to grapple with emotions they wouldn't otherwise be able to confront safely. "I tell them, 'You choose your role, but your role also chooses you' - and I believe that happens for a reason."

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