How did PCAP get started?
It began by accident. I was teaching a course in which students and I performed guerrilla theater linked to social justice causes the students had identified. In 1990, Liz, a student who had enrolled in the course, told me that Mary and Joyce, two lifers to whom she had been bringing materials for the University of Michigan courses they were taking, wished to take the course. My personal political history led me to say yes immediately, though at the time I knew next to nothing about mass incarceration in this country. Liz, another student, and I made the three-hour round trip to the prison once a week, doing exercises and improvisations with Mary and Joyce and getting an education on life in prison. A specific exercise that I had once brought to a film project in a Peruvian shanty town gave Mary and Joyce a chance to ask us hard questions. At the end of the session they proposed that we open the workshop to the entire prison. The warden granted permission. We performed “The Show,” a co
