The afternoon of the first performance, the actors are frantic. A group gathers early to move the backdrop into the gymnasium. The newer guys stay on, to pace and pray.

Just before the show, Curt reads a story about violinist Itzhak Perlman. When he broke a string in performance, Perlman reworked an entire symphonic piece as he played it, rather than stop. Afterward, he said, "Sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

The performance has only a few hitches. By the second show, the men are more confident. But the next night, preparing for relatives and friends, everybody's tense with expectation.

When Sammie makes his entrance, he scans the crowd. Desi couldn't make it, but Jen is sitting up front with her grandmother. At intermission, she and Sammie compare the sizes of their hands. Leonard stands shyly with his parents. Demetrius surprises his mom with his GED diploma, and she dissolves in tears.

After intermission, Titus's son Lucius leads an army against Rome. On the way, he discovers Aaron, fleeing with his son. Aaron accepts his own death sentence, but pleads for his child's life. When Lucius agrees, Aaron delivers a hateful speech, wishing he had caused others more pain.

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

By contrast, Sammie, just before this performance, insists that this newspaper story be told in a way that won't further hurt Carol's family. "I don't know that there exists such a way," he says. Then, crying: "I'm very sorry for what I've done. The tragedy is that I cannot change it. I can change me, but I cannot do anything to help them – to ease their pain."

Leonard has also been thinking about his victims. He says he draws on his experience with the courts to play the vengeful Tamora. "I am guilty," he admits, "and I could die in here." But, he says, the police didn't discover all his crimes; he confessed to several spontaneously, without a plea bargain. He was a Christian then, and believed if he was honest, he could appeal for a merciful sentence.

But he received a harsher sentence, and says he thinks of that when he's playing Tamora. "We like to think of ourselves as merciful. But when something is really wrong, when somebody truly harms you, mercy goes out the window, and everyone reverts back to being Tamora."

Leonard has been serving time for six years. He came to prison with four kids, a master's degree, and computer skills. Under Chandler's strict system, he's more likely to be relocated than the other actors, since he isn't involved in a college program and doesn't act particularly grateful to be where he is.

Onstage, Tamora and her sons come disguised to Titus's home for her final revenge. He dispatches her on a fool's errand, then has his kinsmen unmask her sons and slit their throats. Titus cooks the boys into a pie, and invites Saturninus and Tamora, as well as his family, to dinner. The meal ends in a stabbing frenzy, with only Lucius, Marcus, and an old Roman lord left standing.

That's Michael's cue. He starts out uncertain, but lands his lines. Backstage, the actors cheer silently. The play ends, as it has every night, with a standing ovation.

The actors hurry to say goodbye. Those without visitors stand backstage, wolfing down pie.

The mood this evening has been more electric than at any other performance, but there's another difference as well.

If it were possible those other nights, as the actors took their bows, for anyone simply to enjoy the moment – without thinking of the men's crimes, of the sorrow they've caused, of the abuse they often have endured, of how they live now – it is impossible tonight. The audience and actors leave through separate doors: the inmates to be strip-searched and hurry back to the dorms for a head count, their guests to go home, or anywhere at all.

Curt and corrections officer Karen Heath are the last to leave. Heading down the long corridor, they pass some of the guys who've been searched, including Sammie and G, chatting in a holding area. When the men see Karen and Curt, they grin and wave – and keep waving until the door clangs shut behind them.

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