Polish inmates go free to perform Shakespeare

For a Shakespeare play with a twist, a Polish arts troupe cast inmates alongside professional actors in an effort to engage those on the sidelines of society.
The six men, whose crimes range from theft to battery resulting in death, performed their adaptation of the bard’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Warsaw’s posh Polish Theatre last weekend.
“We never thought it would really come to this,” said Szymon Semeniuk, 33, who plays Demetrius and is serving a three-year term.
“Because us, thieves from jail, on stage? Really?” he said, citing initial concerns that other inmates and the public would make a laughing stock of them.
“But after the premiere, we grew a little taller, and we now feel pretty confident up there.”
The men were bussed over from their high-security prison in the eastern town of Opole Lubelskie for the show, part of a program between the jail and the Zapaleni.org arts troupe.
“I want people to see that these are normal guys who are able to do something and can be likeable. That they can give something of themselves, not just take,” said Dariusz Jez, 47, the group’s founder and a professional actor.
Jez speaks from experience: the former gangster with a pot belly and hearty laugh did time for fraud and other offenses before changing his ways, in part thanks to his own stint in prison theater.
Well aware of the healing power of the arts, he has plans to bring it to other marginalized groups, from homeless individuals to the elderly to people with AIDS.
His partner, director Joanna Lewicka, chose the Shakespeare comedy because she thought the experience would be like a dream for the men, an escape from the realities of life behind bars.
“In a place with individuals forgotten by God, it matters that not only are people not afraid to be around them but that they also want to collaborate,” said Lukasz Pruchniak, who runs the prison’s cultural program.
Starting in June, several dozen inmates spent months on set design, rejigging the script and rehearsing lines with the help of theater professionals.
Andrzej Fiuk, 46, locked up for extortion, did most of the script work, shortening the bard’s text and adding a knowing subplot of inmates staging a play within a play as an escape ploy.
“Shakespeare is hard, so I really had to delve into the text to understand it, to cut the dialogue in a way that would hold water, right?” said Fiuk, whose translations of prison slang had the crowd roaring with laughter.
Before leaving for Warsaw, the men spoke with AFP in a cell reached via a maze of corridors and a dozen locked doors.
Asked about the play, they joked that they did it for “the fame, the money, the women.”