News

All the Jail's a Stage

Continued from page 3

"People were frightened of Oedipus," Wilcox explains. "The townspeople of Colonus didn't want to let him in because he was cursed. One of the actors said to me, 'He's like a parolee.'"

Schell admits that sometimes he feels like Oedipus. "I am the accursed, the black sheep of the family," he says. But unlike Oedipus, whom the gods marked for failure before his birth, Schell says, "I'm here because of decisions I've made, not because of decisions that others made.

"Sometimes you're so smart, you'll trip over dollars trying to pick up pennies, and it comes back to bite you in the ass," he jokes.

Chris Harris, who also was transferred from Pacific to Bowling Green, splits the role of Oedipus with three other actors. Harris hopes that just as society forgave Oedipus, the parole board will one day let him free again. When he makes his first appearance before the board in 2006, he will have served nineteen years of a life sentence.

"That's the point of taking a person out of society for a number of years. Hopefully you will begin to work on yourself, so that when you come back, you will appreciate freedom," Harris says. "What Agnes has brought to us is something to help us develop that, to develop the discipline. And to see that people are intelligent, that they do have talents that they can develop."

Oedipus brought a blessing to Colonus, the place where he was forgiven and where he forgave himself. "A former inmate does that too," Wilcox says. "He or she can be an example of change and reformation and resurrection to the people around him or her. And he serves as a warning and a reminder that life is very fragile. That almost any of us in our work or in our daily lives can take an action that will seriously damage society."

Even though Oedipus and Hamlet both die, Harris explains, "There's an inference given that hope is still very much alive for good to continue, and even though these tragic heroes stumbled and maybe fell, that their examples will help others in the future make better decisions."

Act II

Manuel Johnson sits at a table outside the Saint Louis Bread Co. in the University City Loop. He has just finished an eight-hour shift as a delivery-truck driver for a furniture company.

Nine months ago Johnson became a free man after serving seventeen years for first-degree assault. The Poplar Bluff native decided to make St. Louis his home because there are more jobs here, and for ex-cons, jobs are hard to find.

Since returning to the real world, the 38-year-old Johnson says, he's been bewildered by how much life has changed. These days, Johnson observes, everyone talks on a cell phone, women are more forward and at the grocery store there are 200 brands of cereal to choose from. "I just wanted corn flakes," he says of his first trip to the store.

For parolees like Johnson, there's much to learn about life after being away so long.

Says Wilcox: "They don't know enough about budgeting. They don't know enough about apartment hunting. They don't know enough about buying a used car. They don't know enough about patience. Because they've been waiting for so long, they've used up all their waiting time and they're trying to make up for lost time."

Mary Riorden, the associate superintendent at Bowling Green, hopes parolees will draw on their experience as actors and realize that "things don't happen overnight."

"Hopefully, they'll be able to set their goals and work at it gradually as opposed to expecting immediate gratification," Riorden says.

Patience is one of dozens of virtues that Johnson says he learned from Agnes Wilcox and the Prison Performing Arts program.

"I played one of the parts of Hamlet," he says. "Of course, Hamlet was trying to determine what action he should take in avenging his father. This is a big moral issue he had to deal with. If I had taken half the time that he took to contemplate my actions, I could have saved myself seventeen years of heartache."

When Hamlet realizes that he mistakenly killed Polonius instead of his uncle Claudius, he feels there is no way to avoid being destroyed, Johnson explains.

"I think when a person gets into that frame of mind, he would like for somebody to step in and help him, but he doesn't ask for help," he says. "For me, I was angry. I didn't know how to express it, so I couldn't explain to someone what I was feeling, so there was no help."

When a conflict arose, the 21-year-old Johnson grabbed a gun and pulled the trigger. Luckily, his victims lived.

Like Oedipus, Johnson hopes for forgiveness from society and from those he has hurt. He has found most people are willing to give him a second chance. He's bought a car and has an apartment in north St. Louis, and he hopes to try out for a play at a community theater one of these days.

"Do I forgive myself?" he asks. "To a certain degree. But I don't want to ever forget what I allowed myself to do."

Act III

John rises from his desk and walks to the front of the classroom. He wears a red sweatshirt and red sweatpants. He looks out at the seven other African-American boys in the class, also clad in the red uniforms of the St. Louis City Juvenile Detention Center. As they tap their wooden pencils against their wooden desks, the beat energizes the room. John begins reading a rap he wrote a few days earlier. His face is round and soft; his voice is softer.

"I'm fifteen years old, and I live on the south/These streets are real rough/If you know what I'm talking about/I'm addicted to the streets /Because I thought it was fun/I was just a teenager/And I thought I needed a gun."

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
Next Page »