Acting Out

When Richard Hoehler first walked through the doors of a medium security prison in upstate New York, he assumed it would be a one-time thing. As a busy freelance writer, actor and teacher he had nonetheless agreed to drive upstate to teach an acting class for inmates pro bono. At the very least he hoped the experience might give him new ideas for his teaching on the outside. What he could not have anticipated was the beginning of an odyssey that led Hoehler to an incredibly popular series of acting and writing workshops and mounting seven full productions with prison inmates—men whom society has written off and locked away as irredeemable. In this account of his journey working with the men, we witness a rare kind of theatrical magic. Within the incredibly dehumanizing and often arbitrary prison system, participants work to express themselves and connect with dramatic works where anger, compassion, forgiveness and tears pour forth in the safety of the workshop. It is clear that Hoehler is not a “do-gooder” but simply there to do good work. This is the remarkable story of theatre’s ability to change lives even in the most unlikely of settings.