Voices from Prison Theater Workshops: an Audio Experience

Jan's Video Pitch

Please help me raise $5,000 to make an audio version of See Me: Prison Theater Workshops and Love, my edited collection of intimate dialogues between people who bonded through prison theater workshops. It's about love and being fully seen by at least one person through the experience of making theater together in the inhumane setting of a prison.

It is my hope that a high quality recording of the book will further uplift the voices of contributors, who include formerly incarcerated workshop participants, artists, teachers, and a prison warden.

The idea to make an audio book came from audiences during a book tour last fall to prisons, universities, bookstores, a museum, and a wellness center. Hearing short, recorded excerpts by the contributors brought the book alive.

The first half of the book is Finn and my story of falling in love in a prison workshop, and the impact of the social turmoil and utopian aspirations of the times, the early 1970s. I am seeking two experienced, well known actors to read the chapters that Finn, an incarcerated participant, and I, co-facilitator of that workshop, wrote. Part II essays are written by five sets of other people deeply impacted by each other in other ways and spawned in prison theater workshops in Louisiana, New Zealand, Scotland, New York, and across the US. They will read their own chapters.

Andy Paris, owner of Voiceworks Audio Studio and fabulous director, has signed on to direct and produce a high quality recording. The funds will provide the reader/writers with honoraria and cover expenses of the recording studios. Thanks for any contribution you make and thanks also to Andy Paris and to Nicole Kontolefa, who recorded the clips for the book tour and this video!

Watch Jan speak about this project here!