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Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theater for Incarcerated Women
This ain't no Dreamgirls," Rhodessa Jones warns participants in the Medea Project, the theater program for incarcerated women that she founded and directs. Her expectations are grounded in reality, tempered, for example, by the fact that women are the fastest growing population in U.S. prisons. Still, Jones believes that by engaging incarcerated women in the process of developing and staging dramatic works based on their own stories, she can push them toward tapping into their own creativity, confronting the problems that landed them in prison, and taking control of their lives.
Rena Fraden chronicles the collaborative process of transforming incarcerated women's stories into productions that incorporate Greek mythology, hip-hop music, dance, and autobiography. She captures a diverse array of voices, including those of Jones and other artists, the sheriff and prison guards, and, most vividly, the women themselves. Through compelling narrative and thoughtful commentary, Fraden investigates the Medea Project's blend of art and activism and considers its limits and possibilities for enacting social change.
Rhodessa Jones is co-artistic director of the San Francisco-based performance company Cultural Odyssey and founder of the Medea Theater for Incarcerated Women. An award-winning performer, she has taught at the Yale School of Drama and the New College of California.
Rena Fraden chronicles the collaborative process of transforming incarcerated women's stories into productions that incorporate Greek mythology, hip-hop music, dance, and autobiography. She captures a diverse array of voices, including those of Jones and other artists, the sheriff and prison guards, and, most vividly, the women themselves. Through compelling narrative and thoughtful commentary, Fraden investigates the Medea Project's blend of art and activism and considers its limits and possibilities for enacting social change.
Rhodessa Jones is co-artistic director of the San Francisco-based performance company Cultural Odyssey and founder of the Medea Theater for Incarcerated Women. An award-winning performer, she has taught at the Yale School of Drama and the New College of California.
- GenresTheatre
247 pages, Paperback
First published November 10, 2001
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 7, 2024
A comprehensive look at a person, a project, a system, a cultural world, and a moment in time "Imagining Medea" is not your feel good story or Hollywood tragedy blockbuster telling. Instead it is an earnest look at a creative vision meant to be a connector between performers and an audience, a sequestered part of a community and another, an alarm, a personal testimonial, and a tool of self discovery.
Rhodessa Jones' two primary missions seem to be to create and to allot a space for voices to be heard. She's never in denial that what she's going to do is miraculously redeem lives. She is blunt about the recidivism rates not only of her performers but in the trends she sees in your journey back and forth from the prison, the recycling of types of stories, and the numbers who fail to commit from the start to end. Instead through the process of opening up on her own story, of taking on a forcefulness as a necessary role, she encourages the women she works with to use the story of the moment to explore the women's connections to their own history, their own past. It is up to each person what lesson they take, what revelations they gleam, and the effort they put into staying true to those revelations. AT the same time, there is no shame for those who fall victim again to lifelong patterns and deeply embedded psychological pressures and habits. She is a support, not a doctor, and while there is a level of sorrow there is a general acceptance that worthwhile work is being done to patch in some of the holes created by hard lives and inequalities.
Clearly meant to be more of an academic text, it is highly accessible. While some of it might feel long winded with page long paragraphs to a casual reader, the mixture of personal, academic, and field crossover of art and the justice system as well as the sociological elements make it an interesting read for anyone with interests in those matters.
Personally I was impressed by the open minded spirit and realistic expectations and views of those who are directing the project, both on behalf of the prison and the artists guiding the inmates. While I have studied criminal justice from an educational point and been involved with the arts for the majority of my life, some of the statistics and acknowledgements about the issues of prison life and administration were still heavy to hear. I have a morbid curiosity to see if there is ever another edition with updated statistics which were alarming even for the 90s or if it would be best to leave it in context of the time.
Rhodessa Jones' two primary missions seem to be to create and to allot a space for voices to be heard. She's never in denial that what she's going to do is miraculously redeem lives. She is blunt about the recidivism rates not only of her performers but in the trends she sees in your journey back and forth from the prison, the recycling of types of stories, and the numbers who fail to commit from the start to end. Instead through the process of opening up on her own story, of taking on a forcefulness as a necessary role, she encourages the women she works with to use the story of the moment to explore the women's connections to their own history, their own past. It is up to each person what lesson they take, what revelations they gleam, and the effort they put into staying true to those revelations. AT the same time, there is no shame for those who fall victim again to lifelong patterns and deeply embedded psychological pressures and habits. She is a support, not a doctor, and while there is a level of sorrow there is a general acceptance that worthwhile work is being done to patch in some of the holes created by hard lives and inequalities.
Clearly meant to be more of an academic text, it is highly accessible. While some of it might feel long winded with page long paragraphs to a casual reader, the mixture of personal, academic, and field crossover of art and the justice system as well as the sociological elements make it an interesting read for anyone with interests in those matters.
Personally I was impressed by the open minded spirit and realistic expectations and views of those who are directing the project, both on behalf of the prison and the artists guiding the inmates. While I have studied criminal justice from an educational point and been involved with the arts for the majority of my life, some of the statistics and acknowledgements about the issues of prison life and administration were still heavy to hear. I have a morbid curiosity to see if there is ever another edition with updated statistics which were alarming even for the 90s or if it would be best to leave it in context of the time.
Displaying 1 of 1 review