Beyond Prison Walls

Where:

161 Humanities Hall Building #601, UC Irvine, CA 92697 (Also known as the Little Theater)

Please note that the Little Theatre is not part of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts campus.

Link to Directions:

https://www.arts.uci.edu/directions-little-theatre

The UC Irvine Drama Emergent Series, in collaboration with Playwrights Project and UC Irvine’s Underground Scholars, will be producing six short plays written by people experiencing incarceration at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility and Centinela State Prison. Although written in prison, the stories are not set in prison, but creatively explore a variety of themes, including motherhood, addiction, peer pressure, depression, and second chances. The theatrical performance runs just over one hour and will be followed by a talkback with the performing artists, returned citizens, and experts in the field of incarceration and justice. Audience members are invited to discuss the wide variety of themes presented in the plays and learn more about rehabilitative programs.

The writers crafted their plays in Playwrights Project’s Arts in Corrections programs supported by the California Arts Council and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. California is groundbreaking in its focus on transitioning state prisons towards rehabilitation and transformation. These plays demonstrate the creativity and humanity of individuals who are serving time and working to contribute meaningfully to the community.

The UC Irvine Drama Department is uniquely poised for this opportunity to produce them, since the University of California Irvine is now offering the Lifted program, a bachelors program inside Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility. Lifted faculty are immersed in rehabilitative efforts at Donovan and building connections to real world opportunities outside of the prison. Some Lifted students will be leaving custody and transitioning to UC Irvine’s main campus in the 2024-25 school year. Additionally, UC Irvine has an active Underground Scholars Program, which supports UC Irvine students who have previously been incarcerated or have been impacted by incarceration.

Student artists from the UC Irvine Drama Department are welcoming students from the Underground Scholars Program to collaborate in the production of these plays. Both parties will inform each other on what art means to them and the responsibility of representation in popular media.

Admission to each performance is free, and online reservations are required. To make the production accessible for all, Saturday’s eveningperformance is streamed on Facebook Live from Playwrights Project’s fan-page. The production is recorded and the video is provided to the institutions for airing on closed-circuit television inside the correctional facilities, for writers and peers to enjoy the production.