[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

SING SING IS A HUMANIZING PORTRAIT OF THE DEHUMANIZED  
[[link removed]]


 

Alex N. Press
July 31, 2024
Jacobin
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Prisons serve as giant holding pens for people our society has come
to see as subhuman. Sing Sing resists such dehumanization through a
tender portrait of the creative capabilities and emotional lives of
prison actors. _

Colman Domingo stars in Sing Sing., (A24)

 

The film opens on a stage: it’s the final act of _A Midsummer
Night’s Dream_, and John “Divine G” Whitfield (Colman Domingo)
is delivering Lysander’s famous lines: “And ere a man hath power
to say ‘Behold!’ / The jaws of darkness do devour it up / so quick
bright things come to confusion.” The actors take a bow, basking in
their audience’s applause.

Backstage, the men buzz, congratulating each other on a great night as
they form a line. They’ve changed into green uniforms and they’re
observed by a guard. These are not just actors, but prisoners.

_Sing Sing_ tells the story of a theater troupe inside the Ossining,
New York, maximum-security prison of the same name: Rehabilitation
Through the Arts (RTA), a nonprofit that was founded in 1996 and has
since expanded
[[link removed]] to
seven more facilities across the state. It’s a tender portrait of
the creative capabilities and emotional lives of a group of men who
have been cast off by society as something less than human. What’s
more: the overwhelming majority of the cast are actual RTA alumni,
playing versions of themselves.

The film follows the theater members through the months following the
Shakespeare production, in which they break from the usual fare of
time-honored classics like _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, much to the
chagrin of RTA’s thespian cofounder Divine G. Instead, the group
decides to perform a maximalist work of patent absurdity, motivated by
the suggestion of Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, a tough-guy
newcomer to RTA, that their fellow inmates might enjoy something
lighthearted.

_Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code_, the resulting play, is outright
goofy. It’s spun up over a weekend by Brent Buell (Paul Raci), the
group’s director. The plot involves mummies and pirates, time travel
and Robin Hood and Freddy Krueger and cowboys, a hodgepodge of
elements incorporating every RTA member’s suggestions. It even has
Hamlet, to appease Whitfield (his relief proves short-lived when the
troupe casts Divine Eye over himself for the role).

The relationship between slightly self-involved Divine G and the
macho, desperately outraged Divine Eye — we first meet him as he
shakes down a fellow prisoner for drug money in the yard — is the
heart of the film as the former, seeing something special in Divine
Eye, tries to help him shed his armor. Theater as sanctuary and
escape, though this proves far easier said than done.

The events are based on a true story. RTA really did put on a
production of _Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code_. John H. Richardson
wrote about it in the 2005 _Esquire_
[[link removed]] article
“The Sing Sing Follies.” Writer-director Greg Kwedar and his
writing partner Clint Bentley then bought the rights to the article
and spent seven years reworking it into a script. Maclin and Whitfield
helped write the film, receiving a “story by” credit. They’re
both executive producers on the film too, which A24 is distributing.

 

Domingo, one of the few non-RTA alums in the production, leads the
cast, and his turn as Divine G, who churns out literature in his cell
and becomes a mentor of sorts to Maclin, is entrancing. Offstage, we
see Divine G, a self-taught legal expert who assists other men with
their cases, prepare for an upcoming parole hearing, allowing himself
to hope that the system might be forced to free him thanks to evidence
of his innocence. (Without spoiling it, the scene of the hearing
itself provides one of the film’s more devastating lines.) In real
life, Whitfield was wrongfully incarcerated for nearly twenty-five
years.

Though _Sing Sing_ was shot quickly over the course of three weeks
in July 2022 between Domingo’s other commitments, it’s a searing
performance. Several shots of Domingo exhaling have stuck with me
weeks later. In interviews
[[link removed]],
he has credited the performance to his scene partners, stating, “You
can’t lie with these guys.”

That’s what makes the film remarkable. Domingo is a bona fide movie
star, magnetic and graceful and dazzlingly beautiful. Yet often,
it’s Maclin
[[link removed]] who
steals the show. When the camera lingers on him as he watches the
other RTA members with skepticism and suspicion, he evokes nothing so
much as a boxer, explosive energy radiating just below the surface.
It’s no wonder A24 already has another project with him in the
works.

And while they aren’t all equally natural onscreen, _Sing Sing_’s
other RTA alumni — David “Dap” Giraudy, Patrick “Preme”
Griffin, Mosi Eagle, Sean “Dino” Johnson, and Camillo
“Carmine” LoVacco, who all play versions of themselves — make
the movie shine as an ensemble performance, even if Domingo and
Maclin’s dynamic is the center of the plot. (The real Divine G, too,
has a gratifyingly funny cameo, in which he asks the fictionalized
version of himself for an autograph.) These men are serious actors;
it’s unlikely that they would’ve found their calling without RTA.

A summary of_ Sing Sing_’s message would mention art’s
transformative potential, gangsters made sensitive once they let their
guards down and process the traumas of life both before and in prison
— as one actor puts it, “We’re here to be human again.” It’s
a well-worn theme, one that flatters filmmakers as artists themselves.
But there is also truth to it: the recidivism rate for RTA
participants is 3 percent [[link removed]], far lower
than the 60-percent national rate, and the film is a demonstration of
why that is, an exploration of how creativity can lead to deeper
self-understanding, offering a critical aid for life on the outside.
(Leslie Lichter, RTA’s current executive director, hopes
[[link removed]] the
movie might aid in the program’s expansion.)

 

The script occasionally oversteps into sentimentality (and offers
little exploration of the forces that landed these men behind bars in
the first place), but it’s also entertaining, funny, and never slow
despite several scenes that consist entirely of the RTA participants
performing acting exercises. It opens nationwide next month; bracket
your cynicism and go see it. I’m no sap, but I joined a crowd of
women in beelining for the restroom when the lights went up, eager to
fix whatever damage my tears had done to my makeup.

I saw the film at its New York premiere — a special night, as
Domingo put it while introducing the film at the Brooklyn Academy of
Music’s Harvey Theater, because much of the cast is from the
borough. It was the first showing of the film, which premiered at the
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) last fall, in which all the
actors were in attendance, making the evening a homecoming, replete
with several well-deserved, boisterous standing ovations.

Yet that night wasn’t really the film’s debut in New York. The
actual premiere had taken place the week prior, when Kwedar and
Bentley, joined by several RTA alumni cast members, screened the
film inside
[[link removed]] Sing
Sing. The incarcerated men offered standing ovations, and Maclin and
Johnson then spoke on stage with a pair of currently incarcerated men
(the film is dedicated “to the RTA members who made it home and
those still inside”). As Kwedar said before the lights went down in
the Harvey Theater, “It was the most profound experience of my
theatrical life.”

Colman Domingo portrays John “Divine G” Whitfield in Sing Sing.
(A24)

Kwedar and Bentley worked as RTA volunteers, and _Sing Sing_’s
entire cast and crew, from Domingo to the production assistant,
received the same pay rate and equal equity in the film. That’s a
reprise of a model the writing duo adopted for 2021’s _Jockey_.
It’s hard to imagine the rest of the ultra-hierarchical film
industry implementing such an approach. Which is too bad, both because
it’s the fair thing to do, and, according to Domingo, it produced a
noticeably different dynamic on set: “This wasn’t just work for
hire.”

“A traditional hierarchical pay structure — where only a few at
the top held all the ownership and were paid at a hugely stratified
rate — would find its way into the experience on set,” Kwedar told
the _Hollywood Reporter_
[[link removed]].
“I don’t know that we would’ve had as open and as warm and as
honest of a set.”

 

After the Brooklyn premiere, there was a party at the bar across the
street. There, the cast and crew caught up as servers circulated with
appetizers and glasses of champagne. The actors swapped stories about
their newfound lives: some had gone to TIFF, with the filmmakers
finding a path for them to attend despite the complications that
accompany travel for people with felon status. Others spoke of
upcoming screenings or professional engagements on the horizon.

As I stood among the crowd, sharing in the actors’ elation at how
different their surroundings were from where they had first met, I
noticed a framed playbill on a table, its margins covered in
signatures and heartfelt inscriptions. “_Breakin’ the Mummy’s
Code_,” it read. “Rehabilitation Through the Arts, Sing Sing
Correctional Facility, May 17, 18, 19, 20 2005.” The cast members
standing nearby briefly marveled at it, then they returned to
discussing the future.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Facebook  Twitter  Email

CONTRIBUTORS

Alex N. Press is a staff writer at _Jacobin_ who covers labor
organizing.

* SUBSCRIBE [[link removed]]
* DONATE [[link removed]]

“Town & Country,” our focusing on rural politics, is out
now. Subscribe to our print edition today.
[[link removed]]

* incarceration
[[link removed]]
* Sing Sing
[[link removed]]
* rehabilitation
[[link removed]]
* Prisons
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit portside.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]