Bringing Theater Behind Bars

Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview. 

Theater has the power to transport and to heal. Josie Whittlesey is trying to harness that power, but her stage isn’t on Broadway, it’s in jails and detention centers.

Whittlesey is the executive director of Drama Club, an organization that teaches theater to incarcerated youth.

Lately, she’s been working with the young women at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island, New York City’s main jail complex. On any given day there are about 9,500 people housed there, most awaiting trial or sentencing.

The Takeaway spoke recently with some of the program's participants about how improv has influenced them and what it means to use acting as an escape. 

Ysmairy, the historian opens the play with a monologue.

(City of New York Correction Department )

Actors watch a scene from Pivotal Rights: A Journey of Women's Suffrage

(City of New York Correction Department )

Takeaway Producer Amber Hall interviews Ysmairy

(City of New York Correction Department )