Shakespeare Behind Bars (dir. Hank Rogerson) cracks open the hardened shell of an audience and makes us look at the true human soul inside characters who are otherwise dismissible as "monsters." There is nobody I wouldn't recommend it to. So I have to limit the focus here to what was most important to me about the film and why I walked out knowing that my life is better for watching it.
Curt Tofteland has been volunteering on a weekly basis with prisoners in Kentucky for ten years now to direct the Shakespeare Behind Bars program: 30 inmates who rehearse nine months to perform one show. Through a friend I was given the opportunity to have breakfast with Curt Tofteland and Hank Rogerson, director of the documentary. As I tried to hang words on what the documentary meant to me, Curt just nodded with a knowing smile. He told me that Shakespeare isn't just a literary icon, but the writer who captured raw humanity better than anyone ever has. Which is why he brought Shakespeare to the prisoners.
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year after year these inmates wear a hardened mask, a false-self who feels no pain. It's survival of the fittest and softness is not rewarded in prison. But for the 30 inmates involved with the Shakespeare productions, honesty is a mandate. They are cast by their peers in roles that fit their background and their crime. In their rehearsals they push each other to go deep, to find honesty, to not act but really wear their character, which for a lot of them means wearing their own skin for the first time. From the screen, their souls became palpable during rehearsals. I watched them discover for the first time the true man behind the label "prisoner," "deviant," "convict."
The film is breathtaking. I laughed and I cried. Then I left the theater chewing on the fact I just just laughed and cried through the struggles of men society has deemed unsafe to enjoy the freedoms I enjoy. That's a sure sign of great filmmaking.