Prison Story Project Production Supported by Brown Chair in English Literacy

Photo by Rebecca Andrews

University of North Carolina at Asheville student Bjorn Goller-Hagood performs in "On the Row."

A staged reading developed from the writing of 11 men housed on Arkansas' Death Row is being performed at colleges and universities across the United States with the support of the Brown Chair in English Literacy, an endowed position within the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas.

The staged reading, titled On the Row, emerged from a six-month initiative of the Prison Story Project. With the permission of Varner Prison officials, a Prison Story Project team composed of Kathy McGregor, project director; Matthew Henricksen, creative writing director; and David Jolliffe, professor of English and occupant of the Brown Chair, traveled to Death Row for one Saturday a month between May and October 2016. The team met with the inmates, all of whom had volunteered to participate, in a storytelling and creative writing group.

At the end of the six months, Troy Schremmer, the Prison Story Project's theatre director, edited the men's writing into a script for On the Row. Having hired actors to read the inmates' work and tell their stories, the Prison Story Project initially performed the staged reading on Death Row for the inmates on October 8, 2016. Four subsequent performances were offered in Northwest Arkansas in late 2016 and early 2017.

Jolliffe, who reads in the production, wrote about the project on social media, and as a result the Prison Story Project was invited to present the staged reading at the annual Conference on Community Writing at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the fall of 2017. Rather than use the original Arkansas cast, Jolliffe auditioned actors in Denver and Boulder to read the roles, and On the Row was presented using the Colorado cast on Oct. 19.

In the audience at the Boulder performance were community literacy scholars and activists from colleges and universities throughout the U.S., many of whom wondered whether a local cast could be assembled for a production at their locations. As a result, the Prison Story Project mounted a production at the University of North Carolina at Asheville on March 2, and the project will bring a production to the University of Notre Dame on April 29 and to Bethany College in West Virginia on Aug. 29. The project is also in negotiation with three other universities who have expressed an interest in sponsoring a production.

"Without a doubt, the men on the row were powerful writers with stories that surprised us with their insight and emotional depth," McGregor said. "They didn't dwell on their pasts or blame others for their crimes. Some of them had found an immense peace that eludes many of us in the free world, and they wanted to share it out of gratitude for having found it."

"In my four decades of developing arts-focused literacy projects," Jolliffe added, "I have never worked with a more diligent population than the Death Row inmates, and I have rarely encountered such focused, challenging, and forceful writing."

For more information on the Prison Story Project, visit www.nwaprisonstories.com.