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strong>Ron Jenkins, a professor of theater at Wesleyan University, started running a theater project in Kerobokan correctional institution, Kuta, in January this year. To learn more about the project, The Jakarta Post’s Rita A. Widiadana interviewed the professor on the way to rehearsals last week. The following are excerpts of the interview.

Question: How did you become interested in running theater activities in prisons?

Answer: I have always been interested in theater that happens outside of ordinary venues, especially when the subject matter is important in some special ways to the people who are performing or watching it. The incarcerated groups I have worked with have always been passionate about theater as an art form that empowers them in an environment where they are otherwise powerless, and gives them a voice when they often feel voiceless. Their passion to write and perform motivates me to keep coming back to prisons.

As a teacher of the humanities, I believe that theater can help us understand what it means to be human, and I have never felt the power of theater as a humanizing force than I have in prison.

Prison is by its nature dehumanizing, and one of the things I have heard often from incarcerated actors is that performing theater makes them feel human again.

How relevant is Dante’s work to our contemporary lives especially to those inmates in Kerobokan prison?

Through Dante’s classical work Divine Comedy, the incarcerated actors have a lot to teach the rest of the world, not only about Dante, but about the true meaning of freedom and justice.

An important aspect of our work is to let people outside prison hear the words written by people inside prison so that the stereotypes we all have about prison from Hollywood can be forever put to rest, and we can see people in prison as human beings, not statistics.

When you first entered Kerobokan prison, how did you feel? Did you think the project would work well?

The most difficult part of working in prisons is dealing with the official bureaucracy, but in this case Director Siswanto (Kerobokan prison warden) was very supportive from the beginning and has helped make everything work smoothly. He understands theater can provide a unique form of rehabilitation in a prison environment.

When you first met with members of Kerobokan theatre group, what went through your mind?

When I first met the group at Kerobokan, I was impressed with their intelligence and creativity — most of all with their ability to embark on this project with such a positive attitude in spite of their difficult situations.

Now that I have seen the preliminary results of their writing and performance, I am even more impressed with their talents and their generosity of spirit. I expected to learn a lot about Dante by seeing his story from their point of views and I also expected to learn a lot about being a human being by listening to how they coped with difficulties in their lives.

I am not disappointed, and have learned even more than I expected from these extraordinary men and women (in Kerobokan). My hope is that we can continue this work and give more people a chance to discover their powers — inside and outside of prison.

The Kerobokan Theater Group will perform before the public in January 2012.