Talk Back: Outrageous Fortune, Thrown Into Reverse

Forty years ago, I produced Off-Broadway a prison drama, Fortune and Men's Eyes, by playwright John Herbert. When I met John, he told me that his entire adult life had been shaped by the time he spent in jail as a 17-year-old. His play was to prove a crossroads in my life as well.

After each Tuesday-night performance, the audience remained for discussion. Former prisoners began to reveal themselves in the audience and joined us on stage. This eventually led to the creation of the Fortune Society, an organization that offered a voice for the formerly incarcerated. My small theatre office was soon Fortune's headquarters.

Slowly, the Fortune Society grew into a full-service organization, responding to the multitudinous needs expressed by the men and women coming to us. Forty years later, it still thrives, doing important work -- the real underpublicized battle against crime -- by giving opportunities to those coming out of prison. Each year, nearly 5,000 individuals come through our doors from behind bars.

All that from a play.

Anyone who loves the theatre can quickly recognize the inherent drama in the lives of people who have been encaged. The theatre and the Fortune Society have been my shared passion for four decades and they are quite compatible.

Years ago, I can recall driving with Eddie, a man who had spent more than half his 40 years in juvenile facilities and prisons. Something caught his eye, and with his Brooklyn gangster accent, which could have come straight from a back lot at Warner Bros., he uttered a line of simple poetic beauty. I asked the source of his quote and he responded proudly: "Lord Byron."

Eddie then recited several poems by Byron. As a teenager in a juvenile institution, he was thrown into solitary confinement, where he found a book, the complete poems of Lord Byron. "Byron saved my sanity," he boasted, "and probably my life."

The stories from men and women who have been incarcerated are often profound or frightening, ironic or funny, but never are they dull. At the weekly community meetings at the Castle, Fortune's residence for homeless former prisoners in Manhattan, I would offer theatre tickets that I hustled up from friends. For many residents of the Castle, a trip to a show was a first-time and unfamiliar experience. One man resisted the opportunity and bellowed, "You don't understand. That's a different world for us. We don't belong there. We don't feel comfortable in that world."

An old-timer immediately yelled back, "If I could get comfortable in Attica, I could get comfortable at a Broadway show. Sign me up."

I soon began thinking about shaping a theatre piece from the life experiences of these extraordinary men and women. Reading the autobiographical writings of Castle resident Casimiro "Caz" Torres took me on a frightening roller-coaster ride. It was nothing but drama.

"Let's get some others and stage it," I said to Caz with all the naiveté inherent in a Mickey and Judy movie. But Caz's story is no MGM musical. Amid the hopeful possibilities, it's full of dark tales. Caz and I began to probe others, and so we created a theatre event, called The Castle.

We rehearsed for weeks -- myself, Caz, and the other players: Angel Ramos, Vilma Ortiz Donovan, and Kenneth Harrigan. As with any original work, we didn't know what to expect. Our first showing was for a roomful of 40 colleagues and friends. They cried, they laughed, they cheered.

We were stunned, but there it was again: the theatre and former prisoners, meshed together. Like Fortune and Men's Eyes, the stories of people who have been incarcerated still resonate. Additional presentations have been equally successful, and beginning March 30, The Castle will run Off-Broadway two days a week.

The theatre is a powerful agent for social change. I love the two worlds in which I walk, and love is when they fall into each other's arms.

-- David Rothenberg

 

'The Castle' runs Saturdays and Sundays, March 30-May 18, at 5 p.m. at New World Stages, 340 W. 50th St., NYC. Tickets: (212) 239-6200 or (800) 432-7250 or www.telecharge.com. For more information on the Fortune Society, go to www.fortunesociety.org or call (212) 691-7554.