Rob Pensalfini

Arrernte: A language with no syllable onsets

That syllable onsets are present in all languages is widely regarded as axiomatic, and the preference for syllabifying consonants as onsets over codas is considered a linguistic universal. The Central Australian language Arrernte provides the strongest possible counterevidence to this universal, with phenomena generally used to determine syllabification suggesting that all consonants in Arrernte are syllabified as codas at the word level. Attempts to explain the Arrernte facts in terms of syllables with onsets either make the wrong predictions or require proposals that render the putative onset universal unfalsifiable.

Vowel harmony in Jingulu

Jingulu, a language of North-Central Australia, exhibits a pattern of regressive vowel harmony which is not only difficult to characterise accurately in descriptive terms, but also poses challenges for current theories of vowel harmony. The purpose of this article is thus threefold: to describe a fascinating phonological phenomenon, to formulate accurate generalisations which capture the phenomenon, and to bring the phenomenon within the range of current theories. I argue that the phenomenon cannot be understood in purely phonological terms, but must also take morphosyntactic properties of the language into account.

The Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble’s Shakespeare Prison Project

The Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble’s Shakespeare Prison Project (known from 2006 to 2010 as the Arts in Community Enhancement, or ACE, project, and since 2011 as the Shakespeare Prison Project, or SPP) is Australia’s only ongoing Prison Shakespeare project. This chapter examines in detail the history, operation, challenges and outcomes of this project, and compares it with other Prison Shakespeare projects. This chapter adds to the weight of case studies by practitioners that exist in the literature (see Chapter 2), and when compared to them exemplifies how differences in programme operation are sometimes motivated by ideology and philosophy, but just as often determined by the characteristics of the correctional environment.

The History of Prison Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s plays have been performed for over four hundred years, and the use of drama either as recreation or rehabilitation in a prison context goes back in written record almost a century, or over two centuries if we include the Australian convict theatres of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Jordan, 2002). Balfour (2004) gives evidence that art created by prisoners is as old as incarceration itself, and that there was probably a theatrical component to that from very early on. Early documented examples of non-incarcerated artists going into prisons to facilitate dramatic activities include J. L. Moreno’s work with Psychodrama in prisons in the middle part of the twentieth century. In terms of formal (sanctioned) performance, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot was first produced by prisoners in 1953 in Luttringhausen Prison, near Wuppertal (Germany), less than a year after its premier production in France (the translation was done by one of the prisoners), and also had a much-celebrated production in San Quentin Prison (California) in 1957.

What’s So Special About Shakespeare?

In the previous chapter, we saw that Prison Shakespeare may have a variety of effects on the individuals who participate in it, others who come into contact with it, the prison environment, and attitudes towards Shakespeare and prisoners in the general community. Something as simple as a group of people working together to put on a production of a Shakespeare play in front of an audience of peers can help to replenish long-empty stores of self-love, and give rise to the kind of aliveness and lightness reported by some participants, along with a capacity for feeling, and therefore empathy, that may have been suppressed. Participants experience themselves and others in new ways, and develop relationships built on constructive collaboration and mutual respect. For many prisoners, it is their first experience of being seen by others to be worthy of respect and attention. Participants develop a range of skills that have broader application, and their experiences with these programmes may lead them to develop and pursue further educational and personal goals. Members of the public who come into contact with Prison Shakespeare programmes, typically through attendance at a performance or sharing, often question their own attitudes and preconceptions about prisons and prisoners.

The Prisoner’s Condition

In asking what it means for prisoners to perform Shakespeare, there is an underlying assumption that it must mean something other than, or beyond, that which it means for non-incarcerated people. Implicit in the question is the notion that prisoners are somehow different to the general population. These differences could be a result of who prisoners are, as a class of people a priori, that distinguishes them from the general population. This ties in to the notion of a criminal class, a kind of person who commits crime, whose qualities are determined by social conditioning, genetics, or some combination of those. On the other hand, as Heritage has argued (Dekker, 2014), we are all capable of crime, and those who are incarcerated are not intrinsically any different to those who are free. Social conditions contribute to the expression and degree of transgression of our antisocial urges, and how they are treated by society, which ultimately result in whether people are punished by incarceration or not. This chapter focuses on the psychological and social conditions in which prisoners are found while incarcerated, both those that come from their personal history prior to incarceration and those subsequently found within the prison system.

The Claims of Prison Shakespeare

In Chapter 2 we observed a number of similarities among Prison Shakespeare programmes, as well as a number of parameters of variation. What is remarkable is the consistency of the claims made by practitioners and proponents of Prison Shakespeare projects across the board. These claims fall into several key groups: benefit to individual prisoners, benefit to artists, impact on prison culture, impact on the broader community, challenges for programmes and risks of programmes. Some are better described than others, with the question of programmes’ benefits to the individual prisoners who participate in them being the most widely discussed.

Shakespeare of the Oppressed

This essay is a case study of Australia’s only project (to date) engaging prisoners in the performance of Shakespeare’s plays, the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble’s ‘Arts in Community Enhancement’ (ACE) project. As such, it forms part of a larger global phenomenon referred to as ‘Shakespeare Behind Bars’, named after its arguably best-known incarnation in Kentucky. Future research will examine the global phenomenon as a whole, but this chapter examines just the Australian project, from its development in 2006 to its current practice. ACE is unique, or at least highly unusual, with regards to other prison Shakespeare projects, in that it makes extensive use of the methodologies of Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) in preparing for the performance of Shakespeare’s plays.