You Need Company in the Dark: Building The House of Bernarda Alba at HMP Holloway Prison

Journal of Correctional Education, Dec 2003 by Williams, Rachel Marie-Crane

Abstract

This article is about the production of The House of Bernarda Alba in Her Majesty's Prison Holloway in London England. It is written from a personal perspective and focuses on the following topics, collaboration, a brief comparison of prison life in the US and the UK, the successful and unsuccessful experiences of participants, and their insights into being a Mother, Sister, and Daughter. The purpose of this article is to provide a narrative account of the difficulties and experience of working as an arts educator in prison. This article springs from the journal I kept while working, conversations with the participants, and personal observations. This experience changed the way that I work with women in prison and furthered my convictions that time and an understanding of prison culture are two of the most important elements in any successful education program. It is also important to decide if the program will be driven by participant needs, a pre-determined end goal or both.

You Need Company in the Dark

Since 1994, I have been an art educator working with incarcerated women and girls in the United States to create images and objects in which the artists can re-vision their choices and self-concept. The most successful projects involve collaboration, an understanding of the prison culture, and way to reach beyond the prison to the community.

In June of 2001, I was invited by The Inside Job Theatre Company to collaborate with Dr. Deirdre Osborne and the incarcerated women of Holloway Prison in London, England to produce The House of Bernarda Alba, written by Fedrico Garcia Lorca. We chose the House of Bernarda Alba because the cast is made up entirely of women, and it has themes throughout of imprisonment and repression. The original play is set in Spain in the 1930s and is about an overbearing mother and her five daughters. The mother will not allow the daughters to marry or leave her home. The daughters are prisoners; they each fear their mother, Bernarda Alba. During the course of the play, the audience sees each daughter's reaction to their mother's repression. The story of the play, in some ways mirrors the experiences of most women as daughters, mothers, and sisters.

Initially idea of collaborating with Osborne was appealing. Because we are both involved in community arts education through academia the partnership seemed ideal. In the past, she participated and worked as a co-collaborator in drama workshops with incarcerated men; she had not worked with women or directed. I have taught visual art workshops with women and men, but had little experience with drama or theatre design. My experience with women and her experience with drama came together to reveal new knowledge to us both. In addition to our collaboration, we also worked with an independent documentary film crew from Films of Record. The crew consisted of two women, Lucy Fyson and Fiona Melville, who work as filmmakers in prisons throughout Great Britain. Their input was invaluable and gave us a chance to view the experience through the distance created by the objectivity of the camera. The film, Artistic Convictions, Holloway, "House of Women", was aired on an arts channel in the UK in October of 2001.

Working to make this production happen was one of the most challenging experiences I have faced as an art educator. The trial stemmed from trying to work within bounds and still consider and nurture the things that make an experience successful. It was difficult for me to operate within the prison culture and British culture because I was not a native. To collaborate with Osborne was also challenging because we had very different styles of working. We both struggled with the extreme time constraints, successfully communicating our needs to the prison and the filmmakers, and maintaining some sense of continuity between everyone's objectives. This paper is based on my reflections, and the personal, social, and institutional policies, which shaped the experience. It is a story about the experience, women, and working.

Models of Working

In our project two models for working emerged; one model aided collaboration, the other seemed to make it more difficult. In the end we found that at times both of these approaches were in play and necessary for achievement. One way of working for community artists is to center energies on the project at hand and make the project the center of the process. In this mode the work is goal driven, the goals remain consistent, and the group fluctuates in number based on the external needs and personal motivation of participants. A hierarchy develops based on the agenda of the person who set the original parameters. There is little room for digression from these parameters because the thread of consistency is carried through by adherence to the original goal. This way of working offers little opportunity for collaboration between the artist and participants. It also offers little in the way of flexibility.

A second way of working is to make to participants the center of the project and their desires for the project become the focus. The second way of working demands that the participants take responsibility for the outcome of the project, interject their ideas into the process, and work together to create and realize the final product. The second way of working demands a great deal of time, is sometimes difficult because of disagreements with regard to power and ideas, and requires a great deal of group work in order to crystallize each person's role and voice. Most of my previous experience draws on this mode of working.