‘ Woundedness ’ and Dignity: Prison, Theatre and Wellbeing

1. ‘Woundedness’ and Dignity: Prison, Theatre and Wellbeing Dr Katharine E. Low Central School of Speech & Drama

2. ‘Sometimes we treat each other like shit. Sometimes the members [wardens] really make us feel like inmates, they don’t give us respect. Sometimes you don’t see your family.’ (Sikelelwa) • ‘Prison: it is a careful life’ (Deidre - Warden) • ‘Sho – it’s like hell: misery. [I’m] angry every day; violent, aggressive, short tempered, [but I’m] also soft-hearted, emotional. [I] cry easily.’ (Tembi) • ‘When will you come back?’ (Ntokozo)

3. Woundedness & Wellbeing • Our woundedness as a nation, the divisions that we carried into 1994, are persisting like a wound deep down, with a little scar on the top.’ (Ramphele, 2012a) • ‘well-being is a holder of limits: an unstable and fragile resting place for the political’ (CorsínJimémez, 2008: 4).

4. Nigel Rapport on Wellbeing: • ‘Well-being comes to be understood as physical, intellectual and emotional opportunities to interact with fellow human beings, over a period of time, in ways that are valued by actors and reinforced by others’ • ‘having the resources to participate as a full member of a social milieu’ (2008: 108).

5. International rates of imprisonment Source: New Zealand Department of Corrections, 2011 http://www.corrections.govt.nz/about-us/facts_and_statistics/prisons/march_2014.html

6. Current state of South African Prisons • Prison population total (including pre-trial detainees / remand prisoners): 156,659 • Pre-trial detainees / remand prisoners: 28.7% • Female prisoners: 2.4% • Number of establishments / institutions: 241 • Official capacity of prison system: 118,968 • Official occupancy level: 131.7% • International Centre for Prison Studies (2012) World Prison Brief

7. Prisons • ‘pseudo-inspirational slogans’ (Berson 2008: 79) • Sometimes we treat each other like shit. Sometimes the members [wardens] really make us feel like inmates, they don’t give us respect.’ (Sikelelwa) • ‘Some members [wardens] are nice. Others try to break you – they don’t deal with you individually, they deal with you as a group’. (Emma)

8. Postcards

9. Don’t always know where the pathway goes but it doesn’t matter :D Sometimes the feelings of sadness can be changed by the waves and sounds of music Its so scary to be outside! I hope and pray that I don’t do the same mistakes Liquid black loneliness Everything to me seems like its not ending Haven’t been able to smile or laugh Who are we trying to impress I know I’m going to make it in life I love what I’m doing Love what I’m doing Peace is falling down on me I will remember everyone that was good to me Glitter and nice people Become what I want Divapreneur Strawberry Magic in the air Magical Magical They took out all the shyness I felt My mother used to tell me about respect I hate this place, I wish I was home, its so cold I wish I was with my family and friends having mare I want to continue with my studies here in jail Showing them the right way So I can learn more and open my own salon Life has its ups and downs Mina hi kuhulavanaue mina Playing with my son Hide seek we love Together having fun. I like to see my son happy every night and day I don’t want to see him unhappy. Worms Worms Feel cold, happy I love me

10. Interpreting & Witnessing • ‘[t]hecollaborative work of creating a performance piece grants inmates permission to speak and be heard, to touch each other, and to play, all of which can contribute to emotional growth’ (Berson, 2008: 92). • the representation ‘must firstly always leave room for the other to breathe’ • and secondly by ‘being available as a witness [requires us] to disturb our own sense of ourselves, and to risk bringing that shaken self to the table’ (Salverson, 2006: 149-150).

11. Witnessing • ‘function of performing witness is to enable and engage with subaltern speech and to render visible those subjects who might otherwise remain invisible’ (Wake, 2008: 188). • ‘to witness an event is to be present at it in some fundamentally ethical way, to feel the weight of things and one’s own place in them’ (Etchells,1999: 17). • ‘Witnessing is also about impossible tenderness’ (Salverson, 2006:154).

12. Tenderness? • Lauren: • ‘You are alone, as an individual, [it is about] your views. You are you. It justifies you as a person’. • Sikelelwa: • ‘When I came back from the workshop, I was me – no bitterness inside. I forget I was in prison, but when I got back to my cell, I remembered’.

13. The Prison Warden: Deidre • ‘I enjoyed it so much, I forgot I was at work. I forgot the prison environment’ • ‘it made me realise they are more than what you perceive. Everyday things that you won’t necessarily find out by just talking’

14. Conclusion • ‘that there is no conceivable set of social programmes’ • (including job creation, social development and family counselling) • (Altbeker, 2011: 64-5). • ‘academic sugarcoating’ (Edmondson,2007: 7-8).

15. Bibliography • Altbeker, Antony (2011). Crime and Policing: How we got it wrong. In Max du Preez (ed.), Opinion Pieces by South African Thought Leaders, Johannesburg, South Africa: Penguin Books. • Berson, Jessica (2008). Baring and Bearing Life Behind Bars: Pat Graney’s “Keeping the Faith” Prison Project, TDR: The Drama Review, 52 (3), pp. 79-94 • CorsínJiménez, Alberto (ed.) (2008). Culture and Well-Being: Anthropological Approaches to Freedom and Political Ethics. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press. • Department of Corrections (NZ), (2011). Prison Facts and Statistics, March 2011 – Corrections Department NZ.http://www.corrections.govt.nz/about-us/facts_and_statistics/prisons/march_2014.html [Accessed February 5, 2013]. • Edmondson, Laura (2007). Of Sugarcoating and Hope. TDR: The Drama Review, 51 (2), pp. 7-10 • Etchells, Tim (1999). Certainfragments: Contemporary performance and Forced Entertainment. London: Routledge. • International Centre for Prison Studies (2012) World Prison Brief: South Africa. [online].Available at: http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/wpb_country.php?country=45 [Accessed February 5, 2013]. • James, Wendy (2008). Well-Being: In Whose Opinion, and Who Pays? In Alberto CorsínJiménez (ed.), Culture and Well-Being: Anthropological Approaches to Freedom and Political Ethics. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, pp. 69-79 • Larlham, Daniel (2012). On Empathy, Optimism, and Beautiful Play at the First African World Cup. TDR: The Drama Review, 56 (1), pp. 18-47 • Ramphele, Mamphela (2012a). Woundedness and South African Society. Business and Keynote Speaker presented at The Country Club Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa, June 7th, 2012. • Ramphele, Mamphela (2012b). Walking over the wounded. Mail & Guardian, June 28th, [online]. From: http://mg.co.za/article/2012-06-21-er-the-wounded (accessed on July 5, 2012). • Rapport, Nigel (2008). On Well-Being, Being Well and Well-Becoming: On the Move with Hospital Porters. In Alberto CorsínJiménez (ed.), Culture and Well-Being: Anthropological Approaches to Freedom and Political Ethics. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, pp. 95 - • Salverson, Julie (2006). Witnessing subjects: A fool’s help. In Jan Cohen-Cruz and MadySchutzman (eds.), A Boal Companion: Dialogues on theatre and cultural politics. London & New York: Routledge, pp. 146-157. • Wake, Caroline (2008) Through the (in)visible witness in Through the Wire. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 13 (2), pp. 187-192. • Young-Jahangeer, Miranda (2005). Bringing in to play: Investigating the appropriation of Prison Theatre in Westville Female Prison, KwaZulu-Natal (2000-2004). South African Theatre Journal, 19, pp. 143-156.