Bard Behind Bars

There was an air of uncertainty yesterday in the prison gym as the witches of Macbeth took to the stage.

Finally -- after the correctional officers had cataloged every piece of equipment, after the actors had been patted down and buzzed through steel doors, after a makeshift stage had been set up and secured -- Shakespeare was about to make his debut at the Patuxent Institution, a penitentiary housing hundreds of violent crime convicts.

It was the first time in Maryland history, as far as anyone knew, for such a performance in a maximum-security facility. And how exactly would the Bard of Avon play in prison?

For the occasion, the Ellicott City-based Chesapeake Shakespeare Company had chosen his shortest tragedy: Macbeth, a play full of bloody murder, betrayal and regret.

"I wonder about the violence and how that will go over with the inmates," said Charlie Mitchell as he prepared for his role as Macduff, a force of vengeance in the play. "It feels odd to perform acts of violence in front of people who were sent here in many cases for those very same acts."

For weeks, the performers had prepared for their visit to the institution in Jessup, halfway between Washington and Baltimore. Many adjustments had to be made to meet the penitentiary's strict regulations: Stainless steel swords were ruled out as a security hazard, so the stage crew used wooden sticks for the play's climatic duel. Two parts normally played by child actors were written out over safety concerns. And correctional officers, imagining all that could go wrong during a 10-minute intermission, insisted that the performance be break-free.

Despite the restrictions, organizers hoped Shakespeare's centuries-old words and themes would strike a chord.

"His work is universal. I mean, who else still has his stuff being performed 400 years later?" said Warden John Wilt, a longtime fan of the bard's who had come up with the idea.

A large grizzly bear of a man, Wilt has the graying beard and gruff manner of a man who has spent 37 years in prisons. But all those years, he apparently was nurturing a soft spot for Shakespeare. Every year, he observes the writer's birthday on April 23 by talking about his plays to anyone who will listen. At home, he keeps a journal full of his favorite Shakespeare quotes.

"Shakespeare puts into pithy words what I feel in everyday life," Wilt explained, rattling off a string of obscure lines. One night, driving home from work, Wilt saw a sign advertising the local Shakespeare company and asked inmates and staff how they felt about bringing a little literature into the prison. Twenty years ago, he told them, he had brought a play into a minimum-security facility with mostly positive results. Why not try it here?

Many, especially among the inmates, were surprised. But if it could work anywhere, it would work at Patuxent Institution, said Randall Nero, a psychologist in charge of the prison's operation.

The facility is set apart from other Maryland prisons, with its own parole board and structure, he noted, which allows Patuxent to emphasize treatment rather than punishment for its 812 convicts. Although almost half of the inmates in Maryland's other prisons are rearrested within three years on parole, Patuxent has a zero percent recidivism rate in that period, Nero says.