Rehabilitation Through the Arts: Performing THE WIZ (Part 1)

This past January, around 150 people gathered together for an evening performance for invited guests of The Wiz. Most, if not all, of the actors were new to the stage. The cast was made up of only women.

And they were all inmates at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, the only maximum security prison for women in New York State.

The production was managed by Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), an organization founded in Sing Sing in 1996 with the goal to use creative arts as a tool for social and cognitive transformation behind prison walls. Today, RTA works in five New York State prisons with innovative programs in theatre, dance, creative writing, voice, and visual arts.

When they approached Samuel French to use The Wiz for their latest musical, there was no question that we wanted to be involved. Several Samuel French staffers actually attended the performance, and came back with a deeper understanding and respect for what RTA accomplishes through its efforts.

We wanted to share their story with all of you, so our Breaking Character Magazine Editor, Courtney Kochuba, sat down with Anne Lloyd and Michael Minard, the co-faciliators of RTA, to chat about how their process of choosing The Wiz, how they ensured that the women were ready to tackle such a production, and why this particular musical resonates so well with their unique cast.

Courtney Kochuba: Thanks for sitting down to chat! Anne, you wanted to start by referencing a quote from Val, one of The Wiz cast members. She said, “I knew we would pull it off, even though you had to wonder.”

Anne Twomey Lloyd: So funny. I felt that way every day we were in rehearsal! In that quote, the “we” is referring to the inmate members who are currently incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility (BHCF) in Bedford Hills, NY where we directed The Wiz .

Courtney: And you guys presented the full show, correct?

Anne: Right. It was a boisterous, full scale production. I directed it, and RTA’s co facilitator Michael Minard was our musical director.

Courtney: How long have you two been working together?

Anne: We’ve facilitated the RTA program at Bedford Hills together for about five years. Michael comes from a background of music, being a musician, composer, and educator. And I was an actor in New York and Los Angeles.

Courtney: I understand that it took you a full year to develop and rehearse the production. And today, we’re going to chat more about a particular part of that year, the workshop that you did, which sort of worked like a test run for the full production?

Anne: We did an exploration we called “Workshopping The Wiz.” We wanted to be sure that if we mounted a full production of The Wiz, it would pay off for them (substitute ‘our women’ for ‘them’) — theatrically, musically, spiritually, emotionally, and creatively. What relevance did the characters, themes and music have for the group? How could I, as director, make The Wiz meaningful for our actors as well as our audiences inside a maximum security prison? Why do The Wiz at Bedford Hills at all?

Michael Minard: Launching a production in prison is an enormous effort for everyone involved ­ inmates, prison officials and volunteers alike. To see if we all had the desire and determination to take on a complete Broadway show, Anne and I tested the waters with the “Workshopping The Wiz,” which ended with a short presentation for invited guests.

Courtney: What were those workshops like?

Anne: You know, security is tight at Bedford Hills. There are entry searches, many clanging gates, and officers with rifles in high towers. Look outside our classroom windows and you will see miles of razor wire that surround the facility. But our sessions inside the prison included many hours that were typical of any theatre class anywhere: focusing meditations, stretching, relaxation, breathing, articulation, improvisations, and physical work. We wrote a lot, too. There are profound, heartbreaking moments. At times things get hilariously silly.

Courtney: That sounds like a great way to get the inmates to open up. Is that why you chose this particular musical, because of its themes of home and community?

Michael: Well, Stephen Sondheim once said that The Wiz was his favorite musical “because it captures the most elusive quality there is — joy.” If you’ve ever been to a maximum security prison, you know joy is an experience that can be in short supply.

The women were the first to suggest The Wiz as a possible show for us to stage. We had sometimes sung “Home” informally around the electric keyboard. This is an incredibly poignant song, but it’s particularly meaningful to an incarcerated population. So like Sondheim, the women in our RTA group felt that this show might give them a chance to express and explore joy.

Anne: Incarcerated people have very little choice about most aspects of their lives, but our women choose to participate in RTA. And because of the isolation and tough conditions of life in prison, for many members our sessions are the only time during their week when they can be just themselves. They can drop the façade needed to get through their lives inside Bedford Hills. They call up feelings and images from their hearts. We share a sense of freedom when we’re here together. But Michael and I are allowed to walk out through the gates at the end of the evening, and our members are not. A bittersweet part of our work with incarcerated women.

Courtney: It certainly sounds like it. How did they respond to the actual physical part of the workshop, with the singing and acting?

Michael: We introduced one song per week, and discovered the enormous musical and theatrical variety that Charlie Smalls had invested in his songs.

Courtney: Meaning?

Michael: The variety of styles of music in The Wiz, including gospel, rock, funk, pop, even burlesque, was a real source of delight to our women. The songs, like the genres they come from, permit really flexible interpretations, allowing each singer to put her own personal stamp on the musical material.

[caption id=”attachment_5236" align=”aligncenter” width=”750"]

Musical Director Michael Minard coaches the Tinman. Credit: RTA[/caption]

Anne: The next aspect of our workshop process was discovering the themes found in the show and understanding how they’re woven into the characters, the music, and the actions of the musical. In our circle, we wrote and we read to each other, examining the elements of The Wiz as they manifested in our own lives.

Courtney: Oh, interesting. So the women actually wrote their own pieces in response to The Wiz?

Anne: Right. For example, Lashaina wrote about being swept away, as Dorothy is by the tornado, saying, “ Standing in front of the judge/ my heart beats/ how did I get here? / They swept me away/ my kids, my family/ DA gambling with my life like they rolling dice…”

And Rosa, writing on the longing to go home, wrote, “Home, what a feeling that would be/the sense that you don’t have to answer to them anymore/the feeling that I seem to have lost/move here, move there, eat now or not at all…”

We talked about the promises made and broken in The Wiz and in our lives. And we talked about the heart of the play, the part that most deeply resonated with many of our women: finding within ourselves strengths we never realized and the power to change from within.

Courtney: That’s really beautiful.

Anne: Another favorite of mine is Gloriann, who wrote: “I’ve realized I am not alone, that those surrounding me are on the same journey as I am, regardless of the different paths that led us here.”

Courtney: It seems that on an emotional level, the women really connected to the material. But what about tackling the actual physical part of singing and acting?

Michael: Well, our basic approach to learning songs during the Workshopping The Wiz process was simple, but not always easy. We started by learning each song in unison, working as a group to sound “as a single voice,” matching pitch, phrasing, diction, and dramatic emphasis. I realized if I could help the women hear themselves and hear each other, then this would be a real accomplishment in an environment where cooperation between individuals isn’t encouraged.

This deep listening is something that RTA considers a life skill, something that helps the women inside and outside of prison. And this focus was carried into all aspects of the music, including vocal production (singing with your entire body), diction (can everyone understand what you’re singing?) and dramatic intention (why is this character singing this song?).

Anne: As we sang and wrote, we did a table read of the entire play in sections, trading off parts as we went, to hear how it sounded in our own voices. From the first, the humor appealed to our actors. They loved the quick witted honesty of the characters and their willingness to call each other out. We laughed a lot. The crazy, over the top portrayal of evil in the play, the softness, love, and tenderness it was all so accessible. Our women wanted to inhabit these spirited and fabulous characters that were so far from their lives at Bedford Hills.

Michael and I were amazed at how naturally the actors understood the play, and how good it sounded hearing the lines come from them. We read and talked our way through the show, then put together a workshop presentation for an invited audience of about 30 inmates who were friends of the group. Our special guest that night was Superintendent Sabina Kaplan, who has a strong interest in theatre.

Courtney: How did the presentation go?

Anne: We performed several songs from The Wiz that Michael had arranged for us with beautiful harmonies, which we’d rehearsed for several months. Our performers were empowered by sharing their stories and the glorious songs, and the spirit of the feelings and ideas resonated with the women in our audience. Everyone wanted more of The Wiz. They wanted all of it.

Courtney: What is it about the musical that resonated so fiercely with them?

Anne: As storytellers within an isolated and forbidding environment, we wanted to get a little closer to the truth of these moments ­being swept away, the yearning to go home, finding strength within ourselves — and share them with as many inmates as possible. To be able to create within the fantastical world of joy and terror imagined by Charlie Smalls and William F. Brown was irresistible. The Wiz is not only surprisingly relevant to the experience of being incarcerated, but it’s so much damn fun.

Courtney: So it was then that you all decided to go for it and mount the full production?

Anne: Yes. We took a vote and gleefully decided: onward to Oz!

Check out Part II of this interview here!