Listen to this wonderful interview on WAMC with Broadway luminaries Sherie Rene Scott and Dick Scanlan, RTA’s newest volunteers, who along with volunteer Sean Fischer, donated their formidable talents to guide the prisoner-participants in Rehabilitation Through The Arts on a powerful theatrical journey.

The workshop “Theatricalizing the Personal Narrative” took place over several months in Woodbourne Correctional Facility, a medium security men’s prison in Sullivan County, and ended with a riveting presentation of monologues performed by prisoners for invited prisoner and outside guests. Some pieces were light, but most, dealing with confusion, loss and remorse, were wrenching – a child torn from his mother, a brutal incident in the prison yard, a 14 year old girl caught in the crossfire.

The audience was moved by the men’s talent, as well as their courage to speak so deeply and honestly about their lives, displaying, as Sherie commented, a “level of commitment and bravery it takes some actors years to go to”.

While RTA focuses on the transformative power of the arts on prisoners, we sometimes forget how important the transformative experience is for volunteers. Sherie’s coming “face to face with preconceived ideas I was not even aware of” is a shared experience among volunteers, a recognition of the humanity they see behind prison walls, and often, a life-changing revelation.