The best moments of watching live theater don’t always happen onstage—sometimes they happen in the audience, or in the parking lot after the show.
Or in prison.
Five years ago, I watched, mouth agape, as a group of eager new actors performed “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” at Sterling Correctional Institution, 120 miles northeast of Denver. A few intrepid University of Denver drama students and a few dozen inmates were there, performing Ken Kesey’s 1974 counterculture classic about mentally ill people locked away in a psychiatric hospital, deep within the walls of Colorado’s largest state prison.
In “Sing Sing,” Colman Domingo plays a prisoner taking on the role of Hamlet in a prison production of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Hamlet. Pictured here with Clarence Maclin.
Provided by A24
One young man in particular really gave it his all, playing Billy, a terribly shy mama’s boy. In the story, when the demonic ratchet nanny finds him alone with a woman after he has just lost his virginity and threatens to tell his overprotective mother, the stuttering Billy pleads with her in a heartbreaking voice: “Please, don’t tell my mother!” The threat is enough to drive the young man, overcome with guilt and shame, to slit his own throat.
At that moment, I reached for the program, as I always do: I had to know the name of the actor who was giving this astonishingly raw and natural performance, and I recognized him, not from my time covering theater, but from my time in the newsroom at The Denver Post.
Actual cast and crew of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, produced by the DU Prison Arts Initiative at the State Prison in Sterling, Colorado in 2019.
Courtesy of DU Prison Arts Initiative
Some in the audience may have known, but most did not, that teenager Nathan Ibanez strangled his mother to death in 1998, freeing himself from a lifetime of abuse from his parents, the jury never learning about. He was sentenced to life in prison.
In this rare moment of theatrical sincerity, the boundaries between life and art melted away, and the performance ended with a long, heartfelt standing ovation as a tribute to an unforgettable cultural and life experience.
For those two hours, they weren’t prisoners. They were respected actors, respected human beings. Then we watched as they were lined up and led back to their tiny cells.
That was the power of live theater.
A love letter to theatre
Over the past two decades, any discussion of the best films or TV series to capture the cathartic, redemptive and even comedic power of live theater had to start with “Slings and Arrows.” Airing from 2003 to 2006, the Canadian TV series followed the triumphs and tragedies of a troubled Shakespeare theater company based at Ontario’s Stratford Festival.
But while “Slings and Arrows” remains great, it’s “Insider Baseball” that makes anyone who’s ever taken a risk for their art feel like they’re being recognized, heard and getting the satire they deserve. It just doesn’t appeal to general audiences in the same way.
But this year, two incredible films have come along that will instantly rank on any list of the greatest love letters the film world has ever sent to theaters: Ghostlight and Sing Sing. At their core, these two little stories are universal, accessible, and intertwined with the greatest storyteller in history: Shakespeare.
Unfortunately, both films came out at a time when an independent film could barely hope to get a week’s screening in a proper arthouse cinema.
“Ghost Light” opened and finished in June but is now available to stream on Apple, YouTube and Amazon Prime for $6-7. “Sing Sing” is currently showing at Mayan, Alamo Sloan Lake and Boulder Cinemark theaters and will begin screening at the Sie FilmCenter on August 23rd.
These definitely rank #1 or #2 on my (admittedly biased) list of the best movies of 2024 so far, and “Ghostlight” has vaulted itself to the top of my list of all-time great love letters to the theater.
Sing Sing movie trailer
A24
Sing Sing resonates deep in my heart with its wonderful double meaning title. It is the true story of Divine G. (Colman Domingo), an inmate at the maximum security Sing Sing prison in Ossining, New York, who finds a place to feel human again by performing in the prison’s production of Hamlet. I see the same transformation in this man that I have seen in actors performing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and I soon saw it again when I began teaching weekly journalism classes at the Fremont Correctional Facility in Cañon City.
That’s what happens when you give incarcerated people a purpose, a plan, a reason to get up in the morning. A reason to commit. A reason to work with their fellow human beings. A reason to strive to improve themselves when all other hope is lost.
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“Sing Sing” sees inmates perform Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” inside the prison and has been performed at three area theaters.
Provided by A24
“Sing Sing” stars two professional actors acting alongside former inmates who were part of Sing Sing’s “Arts Rehabilitation” program, similar to the University of Denver’s Prison Arts Initiative that gave me the opportunity to teach journalism in Fremont, though its contract with the state was recently and mysteriously voided.
I have seen how teaching theater, music, dance, art and journalism can give incarcerated people, many of whom will one day re-enter society, a greater sense of self by providing clear goals and opportunities to achieve those goals.
If you want to hear Shakespeare’s “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy from the perspective of those who are simply “on” the other side of the barbed wire, prepare to be amazed at how much more meaningful it becomes in this context.
“‘Sing Sing’ lends a level of humanity rarely given to people in prison, particularly black incarcerated people,” critic James Factora wrote.
“Ghostlight” Movie Trailer
IFC Film
Turn on “Ghost Light”
Another little miracle movie is “Ghostlight,” which is definitely not an artsy movie because it has achieved unicorn status on Rotten Tomatoes and is a movie that anyone can 100% recommend.
At this ironic time in my life, I didn’t think it was still possible to fall completely in love with a movie at first sight. But this unlikely movie says everything it should say about the power of theater to heal an entire family, in the most blue-collar way. I would never say this about any work of art, but this incredibly well-constructed movie is… perfect.
Ghostlight stars a real-life Chicago acting family playing a family struck by tragedy, with the actors’ (real-life) names also being stereotypically middle-class Chicago names: Keith Kupfeller, Tara Maren Kupfeller, and their tomboyish daughter, Katherine Maren Kupfeller.
Together, the two play a family trying to get through their neglected grief over the death of a son, and no one wants to talk about it – instead, the petulant father ruins his hard hat job, the rebellious kid does everything he can to get kicked out of school, and the mother does her best to keep a positive face.
When the father is fired from his job, he is drawn into an amateur community theater group preparing a storefront production of “Romeo and Juliet,” with perhaps the oldest actor in history playing Juliet. The way that brilliant playwrights Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson convincingly lure this father into the ephemeral, often comical world of community theater is sublime, and the way they use “Romeo and Juliet” to help this father come to a deeper understanding of his son’s death is simply masterful — complex and emotionally wrenching.
When Rita (Dory de Leon), the troupe leader, said to her father, Dan, “Maybe you just want a chance to be someone else,” that was me trying to convince a student whose parents had literally left her behind to move to another city in 1990 to join my play at Massebeuuf High School.
Dan is not the type to go to professional therapy to get over the death of his son. For millions of us theater buffs, theater is therapy. For Dan, it was.
“Many of us go about our lives suppressing our emotions because in the outside world they can be obstacles,” Rita tells Dan, “but here we can use them to our advantage.”
As Dan bravely but hesitantly steps into this strange new world, it’s entirely understandable that he’s hesitant to tell his family about it — and their eventual discovery of Dan’s secret life is what it’s all about. Such is the power of live theatre — not on stage, but in your living room.
In theaters, a ghost light is a light bulb that is left on when the theater is not in use, so the theater is never completely dark. Some say the purpose of this light is to scare away evil spirits, while others claim it’s to light the way for the ghosts that are said to inhabit almost every theater.
In this film, the ghost light is the last remnant of a light that once illuminated a family grieving the presence of a ghost, and the story revolves around the family finding the light again.
“Ghostlight” is all about “again” – rebirth, restoration, rejuvenation, repair, recovery. It’s a story that could never happen in real life.
But suffice it to say that it can happen in the real world.
Actor Dolly de Leon directs a theatre company rehearsal for the play “Romeo and Juliet” in the film “Ghostlight.”
IFC Film