@owasco's posts and comments about prisoners she has met face to face remind me of a novel I love. I had to ask if she ever read the novel about the theater director who works with prisoners to put on a Shakespeare play. Brilliant!Hilarious! The novel came out about the same time as "Hamilton," and I reviewed it for NetGalley.
But first, here are @owasco's posts so far, in order, about Abu and Akil:
Akil and Abu
are in prison for life, but @owasco comments that "they have transformed their unit into a place where redemption is far more likely, and are trying to get their methods in use elsewhere. I just learned they are having an art exhibit somewhere in Nashville. Of course the prisoners can not attend their own art show. But anyway I smell a post in that."
That's when I thought of
Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold: A Novel (Hogarth Shakespeare) by Margaret Atwood, 2016
Margaret Atwood, Goodreads
Here is my review:
The transposition of Shakespeare to a contemporary prison
setting is something I have not seen before. Who knew convicts could spin a tale of linguistic dexterity, using the iambic pentameter of hip-hop? None other than Margaret Atwood, that’s who, with “Hag-Seed,” a retelling of “The Tempest.”
Widowed, then bereft of his only child, 3-year old Miranda, Felix has been using his passion for Theater as some sort of catharsis. Felix is one of those cutting-edge, contemporary Artistic Directors who keep theater from ever getting stale or predictable, but in his grief, he’s become a little too original, or flamboyantly crazy. His extravagant plans for The Tempest are thwarted--he himself is thwarted--and his entire career is thwarted. Tricked, betrayed, and suddenly exiled, he does something so many of us have dreamed of: he suddenly disappears from society. Drops off the face of the Earth. Most people assume he’s dead.
He actually doesn’t go very far. With a little back-woods shack and a sketchy land-lady who asks no questions, Felix lives out the next twelve years in obscurity. Even when he gets a new gig staging theater productions in a prison, he’s able to preserve his anonymity. It helps that the great Felix was never quite as famous as he liked to think.
The cast of prisoners is funny and heartbreaking, and of course, Felix manages to instill in them his own love of Shakespeare.
I blush to confess: the Bard was never my favorite author. Back in his day, those plays must have been a hoot. Today, the tragedies weary me, and the comedies require such a stretch of imagination and new vocabulary words, I forget to laugh. This novel, however, makes me think I should try harder to see what the fuss is all about. Hundreds of years later, Shakespeare is still more worthy of high school students’ attention than any other writer? I think his plays are only as good as the actors performing them. Just reading the plays and writing essays about them seems more like torture than erudition.
The best part of this novel is seeing what 21stC prisoners do with a 15thC script. The opening pages are hilarious. I’m reminded, in a good way, of “Hamilton: An American Musical” with music, lyrics and book by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
I love the opening scene with the boatswain narrating from a tempest-tossed ship, “Trim the sails, fight the gales,” and Voices Off lamenting, “We’re all gonna drown!” Somehow, I actually laugh out loud when the alarmist boatswain carries on until “A bucketful of water hits him in the face.”
Don’t take my word for it that this is brilliant and comical. Read the opening pages for yourself. The contemporary twists bring the old Bard to life.
The rest of the story is poignant as well as entertaining. Parallels to “The Tempest” are numerous and more fun for the reader to discover than to read about here.
As Miranda does with “Hamilton,” Atwood peers deep into something old and familiar, sees that common folk from long ago expressed the same concerns we have today, then opens the door that lets a cool new breeze blow away the dust of centuries. Using the vernacular of the streets, she reinvents Shakespeare, elevating the iambic pentameter of hip-hop to a comedy-drama.
For some readers, the story might seem to move slowly, then explode into action at the climax, with a swift and perhaps too-neat resolution, and not much real danger for our heroes. I was okay with that. The ending is satisfying. Line after line of memorable prose leads us there, and Atwood achieves more than a cultural re-imagining of Shakespeare. She weaves current affairs into an age-old tale, making the old new again, and showing us that today’s “the world is going to hell in a handbasket” concerns are not so new, after all. And that, really, is more reassuring than demoralizing. We’re all in the same boat. Think quick, keep cool, remember to laugh, and we’ll stay afloat.
When Felix is deposed as artistic director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival by his devious assistant and longtime enemy, his production of The Tempest is canceled and he is heartbroken. Reduced to a life of exile in rural southern Ontario—accompanied only by his fantasy daughter, Miranda, who died twelve years ago—Felix devises a plan for retribution.
Eventually he takes a job teaching Literacy Through Theatre to the prisoners at the nearby Burgess Correctional Institution, and is making a modest success of it when an auspicious star places his enemies within his reach. With the help of their own interpretations, digital effects, and the talents of a professional actress and choreographer, the Burgess Correctional Players prepare to video their Tempest. Not surprisingly, they view Caliban as the character with whom they have the most in common. However, Felix has another twist in mind, and his enemies are about to find themselves taking part in an interactive and illusion-ridden version of The Tempest that will change their lives forever. But how will Felix deal with his invisible Miranda’s decision to take a part in the play?
Read @owasco's posts
for a poignant but inspiring firsthand
encounter with two amazing men whose radiate #faith #love #hope and #joy triumphing in a place of #despair.
Then of course there's the brilliant and hilarious 1983 film "To Be or Not To Be," starring Mel Brooks and his real wife Anne Bancroft, about a Jewish theatre troupe putting on the play Hamlet in wartime Germany.
It was based on a 1942 film of the same name. One of Brooks' best.
No hip hop or rap, though. ;-)
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