Jenkins Awarded Residency to Write about Directing Theater at Correctional Facilities

The Rockefeller Foundation awarded Ron Jenkins, professor of theater, with a residency at the Bellagio Center in Italy during his sabbatical next spring.

Between March and April 2011, Jenkins will be working on a book about prison theater projects that he’s been directing at correctional facilities including his most recent work at a prison in Indonesia.

Jenkins has been collaborating with incarcerated individuals on staging their adaptations of classic texts by Shakespeare and Dante and other authors.  These projects have grown out of work done with Wesleyan students in Connecticut correctional facilities.

The specific texts include Shakespeare’s Tempest, Dante’s Inferno and the Mahabhrata.

“The personalized adaptations give incarcerated individuals the opportunity to tell their own stories by making connection between their experiences and the experiences of classical literary characters, with special emphases on life-changing turning points,” Jenkins explains.

To read more about Jenkins and to see a Wesleyan video on him, click here.