Prison Shakespeare and the Purpose of Performance

Over the last decade a number of prison theatre programs have developed to rehabilitate inmates by having them perform Shakespearean adaptations. While twentieth and twenty-first century ideas about theatre as therapy, political resistance, and popular education hold sway for many programs, this book focuses on how prison theatre today reveals certain elements of the early modern theatre that were themselves responses to cataclysmic changes in theological doctrine and religious practice. Herold reads the Shakespearean theatre at once historically and forward ("presentising"). He examines the precise dramaturgical and ideological elements of this historical theatre that are today conducive to the remarkable rehabilitative success of prison theatre programs like Shakespeare Behind Bars. --Provided by publisher.