The Village of Ossining is perhaps best known as home of Sing Sing Correctional Facility, which gave birth to the phrase, “up the river.”
During its nearly 200-year history, the maximum security men’s prison along the Hudson River has been infamous for its executions but also celebrated for its reform initiatives.
For the past 30 years, the nonprofit Rehabilitation Through the Arts has been offering incarcerated men workshops in theater, dance, music, creative writing and visual arts to build skills to help them meet the challenges they’ll face when released.
Sing Sing, a new film based on a true story, dramatizes an RTA production from start to finish, as the men cope with prison life while coalescing as a group for the play they eventually perform before a live audience.
The film features a cast almost entirely composed of RTA alumni, including co-star Clarence Maclin, who served more than 17 years for robbery at the prison.
In the film, Divine G (Oscar-nominated actor Colman Domingo), imprisoned for a crime he says he didn’t commit, is a driving force behind a theater group with other incarcerated men. After an outsider, Divine Eye (played by Maclin), joins the group, the men decide to stage their first original comedy.
Maclin’s Divine Eye (a character based on himself) arrives with a chip on his shoulder and antipathy toward Divine G, but they eventually bond through tense rehearsals and while both face the possibility of parole.
Maclin spoke about the film and the RTA program following a screening at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville on July 24. Sing Sing will begin a run at the theater and elsewhere on Aug. 16.
“For the guys on the inside, the message that the film conveys is that we all have potential to realize in our lives, and it takes something like RTA to believe in yourself to realize that potential,” Maclin said during a Q&A moderated by Charles Moore, RTA’s director of programs and operations. “Some people never do because they don’t have that nurturing, the arts or something as powerful as RTA to really help them to realize and bring it out.”
Maclin said the program “brought me back to the artistic person I used to be as a youth. As a youth I liked to draw, paint, use my hands to create sculptures or whatever, but that really wasn’t what the cool kids were doing at the time.”
Sing Sing cast member Dario Peña said RTA helped prepare him for his job at Columbia University’s Center for Justice.
“It really served every aspect of my personal growth in the prison as a guy on the inside and as a person,” Peña said. “That’s where I really learned to become a human being.”
Sing Sing was directed and co-written by Greg Kwedar and his filmmaking partner Clint Bentley, who were inspired to create the film while volunteering as instructors at the facility.
‘You can change their trajectory’
More than 1,000 incarcerated individuals have participated in RTA’s programs, and participants’ friends and family periodically have opportunities to attend performances.
RTA currently works in Sing Sing, Bedford Hills, Collins, Fishkill, Green Haven, Taconic, Wallkill and Woodbourne correctional facilities. The nonprofit volunteer group has produced dozens of plays including 12 Angry Men, Macbeth, The Wizard of Oz, Our Town and A Few Good Men. RTA runs workshops year-round in theater, dance, music, creative writing, and visual arts.
Program participants have lower recidivism rate than the national average, and often pursue higher education afterward, according to RTA.
In June, RTA hosted a screening of the film at the prison itself — the first time Maclin had been to Sing Sing since 2012, when he finished serving out his sentence. While incarcerated, Maclin had starred as Hamlet in the prison’s auditorium.
The film’s message, he said, “is that people that are incarcerated are exactly that: people — human beings, people with emotions, people with family, people with friends, people with ambitions. They’re human beings, people that are just like you and I.”
Maclin added: “I’m sure that if you look around your personal circle among the people you know you’re going to find … somebody that may need you to pour some love and some hope and some trust in. You can change their trajectory, the way they see the world, because that’s what RTA volunteers did for us.”
Visit rta-arts.org/ for more on Rehabilitation Through the Arts. Visit burnsfilmcenter.org/ for information and tickets for the film.
Excellent writing and reporter, Robert! Such a positive message too. Thank you.
There is nothing like the ARTS for bringing out the very best in human beings.
“Program participants have lower recidivism rate than the national average, and often pursue higher education afterward, according to RTA.” It’s too bad this is not a national program. It would help so many people.