The only practice space available the first day of dress rehearsals is in the electronics shop, where the actors have cleared a stage area. Curt hands out tunics and wooden swords. It's the first time with these forbidden props, and new actor Randy True – playing Lavinia, Titus's daughter – ricochets among the guys, showing off his sackcloth skirt and soon-to-be-severed hand.

As the scene begins, Titus promises his daughter in marriage to Saturninus. But she is engaged to the emperor's brother, who steals her away. When Titus's family berates him for his action, Titus flies into a rage and kills his son, played by Michael Rogers.

Michael is hunched in a corner of the shop, scrutinizing the script. As his turn approaches, he moves stiffly forward. Ordinarily, Michael has a heavy stutter – but once onstage, he defies Titus quietly, but clearly: "My lord, you pass not here." As his father stabs him, he whispers to his brother, "Help, Lucius, help!"

"Good, Michael!" Curt shouts, and Michael retreats, blushing. Sentenced to seven years for sexually abusing a 7-year-old, he will be released this summer, having served about half that time.

"Titus" is the most obscure Shakespearean tragedy, an unlikely play for any company to produce. Curt says he picked it partly because of what it says about vengeance. "Everyone's been wronged by somebody else, and a lot of them take it out on each other in pretty bloody ways," he says. "But their revenge begets revenge begets revenge, and in the end there are no heroes left. It consumes everybody. I think that's important for these guys – really for all of us – to understand."

	Cast & crew To find out about the actors and directors, click on a photo.

Onstage, the emperor turns his affections to Tamora, who agrees to marry him. She persuades him to feign friendship with Titus until she can devise a way to torture him. The two men exit, leaving Aaron, Tamora's servant and paramour, alone.

Aaron is a bad guy: Everything he does is a means to a criminal end. He's played by Sammie Byron, who once set a US weightlifting record when, at 178 lbs., he hoisted 760 lbs. in a single dead lift. Today, he's most impressive for his oratory.

As he begins a speech, Curt interrupts. "He's telling the group: I'm an educated man," he reminds Sammie. "In Shakespeare's day, it would have had a stronger impact amongst all these white folks to see this Moor speak in that way. But he's still saying: 'I am not a slave!' "

Sammie begins the speech again. "Yes!" Curt shouts, when he hits his stride. "Yes!"

To look at him now, you'd never guess that in elementary school, Sammie was the target of bullies. Initially, fellow African-American children picked on the part-Mexican boy for his lighter skin tone. Then two high-schoolers started beating him up and forcing him to perform sexual acts on them.

Sammie idolized his father in those days. Both he and Sammie's mother were alcoholics, who beat him "usually every day." Still, when the sexual abuse started, Sammie went to tell his father. His shirt was ripped, and when his father saw the tear, "he just started calling me stuff like 'punk,' saying, 'You won't take up for yourself.' So I never did tell him."

When he was 9, his family moved, and Sammie thought he'd escaped. Then his 18-year-old neighbor Paul began molesting him. "And my dad would always say, 'Why don't you be more like Paul?' "

Onstage, Sammie, as Aaron, finds Tamora's two remaining sons arguing about which of them might woo Lavinia away from her new husband. He suggests instead that they join forces and rape her.

After rehearsal, the actors file out of the shop through a metal detector. It blares when somebody forgets to empty his pockets of a pair of chocolate eggs, wrapped in pink and gold foil.

Once outside, Sammie heads toward the rec field. Claudman Anderson, who plays one of the conspiring sons, accompanies him partway. Claudman just graduated from divinity school and will be released next year, after serving 23 years.

He says he got stuck with his role; he didn't want to play a rapist. "I have a sexual-abuse charge. I been through all the therapy, and I've grown. So at first I said, 'Naw, I can't do this.' " His wife, though, gave him her blessing. "She said, 'It's just a play. The person you're portraying is not you, so do your best.' When she gave me that approval, I said, 'Yeah, I'm ready to go.' "

When he reaches the field, Sammie walks out to the middle, its highest point. Outside the fence, long fields roll off into broad sky. This, he says, is his favorite spot in the place. "This is so pretty. If I walk up here, and I look down, I don't see any sign of prison. That's gotta be the coolest thing."