By Scott Thomas Anderson

Last week, The Tower Theater began showing a new movie called “Sing Sing,” which tells the true story of a live theater program for inmates at a maximum-security prison in New York. This film is a stirring exploration of how we cling to humanity in the face of hopelessness. It’s also a sober, not overly sentimental look at how the arts can be part of healing and rehabilitation. 
 
“Sing Sing” brought me back to spending time as a journalist at Angola Prison in 2014. Known as “the farm,” it is Louisiana’s main state-run yard for armed robbers and killers. In the early 1990s, the farm had been one of the most infamous correctional facilities in the nation. Its stats for inmate-on-inmate attacks, inmate-on-guard assaults and inmate-on-inmate rapes were beyond daunting. But then all of those numbers began to dramatically improve when a new warden, Burl Cain, arrived to change the culture – and, in some respects, the meaning – of the prison itself. 
 
At that time, something like 90 % of Angola’s inmates were doing stints of life without parole. In order words, it was a place full of men with very little to lose or live for. Warden Cain understood things would only get better if the inmates had a meaningful path to growth, as well as something to genuinely enrich their lives and bring a sense of purpose. He created an inmate-run dog-training facility; an inmate-run horse-training facility; and inmate-run culinary program; and award-winning inmate-run magazine; and a popular inmate-run radio station that could be heard throughout its part of Louisiana. 
 
Most notably, Cain launched an annual arts and crafts fair for the inmates that was tied to a giant rodeo event. Around twelve thousand people from across the Pelican State had been showing up to buy arts and crafts from the prisoners and then watch inmate cowboys test their grit against menacing bulls and bucking broncs.  
 
At this point, I can guess what some Californian readers might be thinking: “But rodeos are really dangerous, right? Isn’t that reckless and inhumane to let inmates risk getting hurt in them?” 
 
Cain’s team gave me full access to these unorthodox riders. I sat right up by the steel chutes with them as they got pitched out on the animals. And I was allowed to ask them anything I wanted – to just talk to them like I would talk to anyone. What I came to understand was that all the potentially deadly dust on the arena floor was the main thing they’d looked forward to all year. 

“Well, it’s almost immeasurable,” Cain told me and a couple of other reporters about what the rodeo meant to the inmates. “For one moment, they get to be a hero. They actually have people clapping and cheering for them. Listen, a lot of these men have never had anyone root for them in their entire life. It’s not about a rodeo – it’s about changing people.” 
 
A similar theme comes across in “Sing Sing,” in possibly a more relevant way insomuch as a live theater program is far easier to bring to any prison. In it, Shakespeare becomes a vehicle for letting inmates reach deep within themselves while they rise to the challenge of meeting an audience: It gives them a connective bridge to their inner life, not to mention a stake in the outer life of a society whose members they’re performing for.
 
“Sing Sing” is directed by Greg Kwedar. Most of its cast are formerly incarcerated actors who were part of the prison’s theater program at one time. That decision lends a heavy air of authenticity to the film; and while one of its leads, Colman Domingo, is a Broadway star, its other lead, Clarence Maclin, is a former inmate and participant in the program. Maclin plays himself. 
 
If Maclin and Domingo don’t get Oscar nominations for their performances, then there’s no point in that award existing anymore. “Sing Sing” is continuing to play at The Tower this week. 
 
Here in the Capital Region, there’s been a dust-up around one of the programs that exists to help inmates better themselves while finding meaning and purpose. In 2016, Los Rios Community College introduced an education program for inmates to earn their associate degrees at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione. Included in this is the Prisoners Literature Project. According to our reporting, that program has been a major success for some of its participants. But recently, the program was almost canceled due to allegations that its instructors weren’t following certain rules. This week, SN&R and Solving Sacramento have a story by Keshawn Davis detailing how all of the program’s instructors have now been cleared of wrongdoing.