Rehabilitation through the arts remains multi-act story following ‘Sing Sing’ fame
Throughout the film “Sing Sing,” characters “trust the process,” whether putting together a comedy production or challenging a wrongful conviction. Doubts are met with patience, even if the system gives Black and Brown men incarcerated in New York State little reason for faith.
“It’s just trusting that if we do everything as it aligns itself, it’s going to turn out right,” said Sean Dino Johnson, who plays himself in the film. “Working in the theater, we tend to want to just catch it when we catch it. And sometimes it’s not meant for you to catch that. You might be practicing [and] rehearsing, and then the day before the show is chaotic.
“And [it’s] like that with our lives, too. We’re so busy saying it’s not gonna work, but if we just relax and trust in the hard work that we put in, something magical just happens. And that’s the process.”
Now, Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), the real-life program featured in the movie, will also “trust the process” as last month’s nationwide release of “Sing Sing” brings unprecedented momentum. As the film depicts, the nonprofit organizes stage plays in New York State prisons starring the very people incarcerated there, including Johnson, who was held at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, where the program began.
Charles Moore, RTA’s director of programs and operations, says people as far as Japan and the United Kingdom line up to volunteer or pitch in following the film’s release. But RTA remains a plucky New York-based operation housed on the SUNY Purchase campus and reliant on teaching artists commuting to remote prison towns — with travel sometimes almost as long as the classes themselves.
“We would like to grow, but sometimes growth could be dangerous,” said Moore. “As long as we grow slowly and smartly, we’ll be alright. You can’t have this film come out and say, ‘Oh my god, this is our opportunity, here’s all this money [to] be in 50 states.’”
The organization’s first major grant showed Moore the pitfalls of success. The bigger the budget, the more money needs to be raised the following year. Still, many communities can benefit from a prison arts program, and the ambition is certainly there.
John “Divine G” Whitfield — a founding member of RTA who served as an executive producer for “Sing Sing” and is played by Colman Domingo as the lead protagonist in the film — is excited at the prospect.
“When we came into the program, that was our mission of expansion,” said Whitfield. “We wanted to share it, because if it was helping us, we knew it could help other people. This movie is giving us what we’ve been always trying to do, but now we get ready to take it to a whole new level. I think pretty big. Everybody [tells] me to reel it in a little bit…this is a step by step process [but] I believe we need to take something as good as this and share it with the world.”
RTA members perform “Thoughts of a Colored Man” at Green Haven Correctional Facility in the program’s most recent production. (Video courtesy of RTA)
Behind the Curtain
The nonprofit continues to expand at a healthy pace, now operating core programming in eight medium-to-maximum security prisons across the state — six men’s facilities and two women’s. Beyond theater, courses in other mediums like dance, music composition, and visual arts are offered.
Last spring, RTA launched a reentry program called Reimagining Myself, which was recently enlisted out-of-state by the Sierra Conservation Center, a California state prison. It is also offered at the Greene and Otisville correctional facilities here in New York. Jermaine Archer, RTA board member and alumnus, believes post-release programming was necessary.
“We provide resources for people to become their best self, and we realize what happens when they walk out of prison, we don’t have that community,” he said. “I can yell across the aisle to someone else, and we can talk about the experience. And I had someone there 24 hours a day that could connect with me on these things, with shared experiences.
“When you come home, you’re in the rat race in the subways [and] the grocery store, it’s people all in your space, and people have those freakout moments. And we realized we needed more than just an alumni base.”
In fact, plays only represent a small portion of RTA drama programming. Acting workshops occur multiple times a week and will never make it in front of an outside audience. Course exercises focus on tying improv and character study with personal development, rather than hitting the stage. The actual rehabilitation starts there.
“[Most of] RTA’s work [are] these little magical reckonings that happen in back classrooms and facilities that no one but the 12 members of that classroom and the teaching artists will ever see,” said teaching artist Margaret Ables. “It’s not the day that ‘12 Angry Men’ goes up at Sing Sing, and everybody comes and applauds. It’s the constant transformation that’s happening, 12 men or women at a time, [at] 6 p.m. [in the] back of [a] Green Haven classroom.”
The “Sing Sing” cast boasts many alumni who play themselves, including Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, who co-stars alongside the lead man Domingo. Both performances garnered early Oscar buzz, according to award odds aggregator GoldDerby. But there is no RTA prison-to-Hollywood pipeline.
“Even when we take this film into the facilities for our participants to see, we don’t want them to get the misillusion that they’re going to be the next person to be in a film like this and [that] RTA is about producing big-time actors,” said Moore. “This is a dream come true for Clarence [Maclin]. We never knew that such a great film would be written about RTA and it would have the impact that it’s having.
“We do not promise any of our participants that you’re going to become an actor, a visual artist, or professional dancer. But what we can offer you is an opportunity to improve your life skills and give you a couple tools that will help you make it through this incarceration, and hopefully make you successful as a tax-paying citizen upon your release.”
Fewer than 3% of RTA participants return to prison after release. Comparatively, the state’s overall three-year recidivism rate stands at around 19%, the lowest in four decades. And while arguments and disagreements are expected in such an emotionally-charged environment, not a single physical fight has broken out in RTA programming throughout its history.
“These creative outlets provide incarcerated individuals with the opportunity to reflect on their life experiences and thoughtfully discuss and share those reflections through their work,” said a spokesperson for the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. “By engaging in these collaborative art projects, incarcerated individuals acquire valuable skills and self-awareness, fostering personal growth; which is essential for their successful reentry to the community and helps reduce recidivism.”
Rehabilitating Through the Arts
Moore participated in RTA himself, usually as a perennial supporting cast member. But he says his role didn’t matter — for him, boosting his self-esteem and confidence came first. Ultimately, he was hired by RTA post-release, the first alumnus to work full-time on the nonprofit side.
Both Archer and Moore recall first encountering the program as audience members and mistaking the cast as professional actors before bumping into them later in the yard. They initially wondered what the thespians did to get themselves locked up.
A close friend compelled Archer to interview in his place for the program after being transferred to another facility the year he got off RTA’s waitlist. Archer was reluctant, but wanted to fill his time. Similar to Maclin’s portrayal in the film, the Brooklynite was a known troublemaker. And it was Maclin who vouched for him given their similar backgrounds.
“As a matter of public safety, RTA allowed me to release my inner bozo and allowed me, in prison, to have the childhood that I never had,” said Archer. “I was able to be a child again. I was able to have fun. We used to roll around on the floor. We used to dance. We used to do a bunch of foolish stuff that you can’t do in a maximum security prison, the projects, in the hood.”
“It allowed us to understand, this is the life I probably should have had all this time.”
Despite his early reservations for singing and dancing, Archer found himself playing Riff in “West Side Story” for his first role. Yet he felt himself the most portraying characters who weren’t gangsters. Playing George from John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” allowed him to explore a man burdened with a dear friend holding him back. It was too real.
Archer came home in 2020 after serving 22 years. He now works on a criminal justice grant-making team and sits on the RTA board. While his fellow alumni hail Archer as a magnetic presence, he never auditioned for “Sing Sing.” He spent the time challenging his conviction. This past July, it was vacated.
Humble Origins of RTA
Rehabilitation Through the Arts dates back to the mid-’90s and was initially known as Sing Sing Theater Workshop, recall Johnson and Whitfield, two of the founding members. In fact, the program wasn’t initially intended for rehabilitation; the guys just wanted to put on a play.
Whitfield hopped at the opportunity as a former High School of Performing Arts student with a penchant for ballet, breakdancing, and martial arts choreography. Johnson needed more convincing, initially picturing himself in a leotard outrageously reciting Shakespeare while held in a maximum-security prison.
In reality, the program kicked off with script reading. Early on, participants cliqued up, with some groups refusing to intermingle due to longstanding prison history.
“Everybody just sticks to their own, so we start giving out scripts and we start reading,” said Johnson. “Next thing you know, everyone just got so lost into the material, reading the scripts and acting it out. We enjoyed it, we all learned something about ourselves. We learned some things about other people. And we also learned that we all had a lot in common.
“That was the beginning of the RTA community.”
Through theater, a diverse group held at Sing Sing gathered to put on a performance for the ages and left an impression on everyone from the prison population to the corrections officers. Something special was happening.
As shown in the film, Whitfield knew the ins-and-outs of creating a prison program thanks to his experience in grievance work and as a jailhouse lawyer. They turned to founder Katherine Vockins. Soon bylaws and mission statements were drafted.
Before the program, Johnson rarely spoke more than two words in 10 minutes. Now he works as a marketing director and sits on the RTA board. Whitfield credits the program’s creative writing courses for his success as a novelist. He has since won five national writing competitions.
“Sing Sing” is an extension of RTA’s mission to create change through the arts. Putting back on prison greens for the movie was tough for Johnson. But he says he needed to show the public how humanity exists behind bars. Whitfield, who makes a cameo in the film, hopes audience members take away a simple message:
“Love is the power,” said Whitfield. “I think because we had that element of love within us that circulated through us when we interacted with each other, when we envisioned this program, when we put it on its feet and got it moving. The motivating force behind it all was love.”
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
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