Incarcerated men find community and purpose as they develop the season’s show for Sing Sing Prison’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts program. 

DePaul’s School of Cinematic Arts hosted a screening of Greg Kwedar’s upcoming A24 film Sing Sing in late April. Based on actual events and people, Sing Sing demonstrates what rehabilitation and restoration look like through Sing Sing Correctional Facility’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program in upstate New York. 

Humanity is the central driving force of groups like Sing Sing’s RTA and local programs like DePaul’s Inside-Out. The Inside-Out Prison Exchange is a nationwide, interdisciplinary program that brings learning opportunities to incarcerated students by partnering them with traditional college students for a variety of subjects and projects. At DePaul, students take courses taught by DePaul faculty at Stateville Prison in Joliet and Cook County Jail in Chicago for more than ten years. The benefits of accessing higher education and enrichment programs while incarcerated are numerous, but the primary benefit is the restoration of one’s dignity. Visit the Steans Center for more information on how to enroll. 

Since August 2023, I’ve been learning from and producing media about impacted citizens connected to the DePaul Policy Think Tank at Stateville Prison for Change Agents, the podcast. This is an audio journalism lab created by DePaul journalism professor Judith McCray’s Juneteenth Productions. The experience inspired more introspection and unlearning than I was prepared for. I expected my language to change, thanks in large part to Dr. Christina Rivers, Chicago Votes and the Marshall Project’s education. What I hadn’t expected was my axis to shift so significantly. How I engage with all media is forever altered. This change is shocking in and of itself because I have many close family members who are systems impacted, yet the negative and dehumanizing biases were insidious. 

Through the many weeks of the Change Agents fellowship and subsequent graduate assistantship with Social Justice Reporting I & II, I’ve built new practices that use people-first language and look toward alternative and, often, more relevant voices. Now equipped with new knowledge and skills, my side-eye was extra strong while watching Sing Sing. The film tells the story of the RTA troupe’s journey from ideation to production of their play of the season: Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code. At first glance, this isn’t much of a story, except that this all takes place in a maximum-security prison where the stakes couldn’t be higher. 

Divine G, played by Emmy- and Tony award-winning and Oscar-nominated actor Colman Domingo, is a founding member of RTA and an accomplished author and playwright despite his decades of incarceration for a crime he did not commit. Others in the troupe are also doing long-time but find purpose, freedom and connection through their RTA rehearsals and performances. 

The film opens with a dreamlike sequence where we hear a powerful Shakespeare recitation. Gauze and fairy lights drip from the rafters as approximations of the forests of a Midsummer Night’s Dream. We meet Divine G, momentarily alone and basking in the applause there. Soon, he is joined on stage by the rest of the cast. They clasp hands and bow before rushing backstage, where they are lined up, inspected, and stripped of their humanity and short-lived freedom before being shuttled out of the theater and back to their cells.The thespians are inmates at a maximum-security prison once more. 

Shortly after, Divine G and his sidekick, Mike Mike (Sean San Jose), are recruiting for new troupe members. After some deliberation, the troupe considers Divine Eye (Clarence Maclin), the prison’s pusher. Our introduction to Eye is dizzying and confounding yet artful with its tight shots and whip pans that mimic the pace of transactions on the yard. All the while, Mike Mike coaches G through potential scenarios for an upcoming parole board hearing. Their work with RTA is a literal lifeline, a paper trail of self-determination and desire for change that might catch a committee member’s eye and move them closer to freedom. 

Much of the first act is G and Mike Mike both attempting to convince themselves that Eye is a good fit for RTA while convincing Eye that he belongs. Domingo is the cast’s only “known” actor and is central to the plot. The film has all the hallmarks of a sentimental melodrama, but the film’s narrative voice shifts somewhere early in the second act during auditions for roles in the new production. 

Without telling audiences who the players are — not even in an opening sequence — the filmmakers let the actors speak for themselves. In a montage of almost uncomfortably close shots, we meet the troupe. These are men who have participated in RTA over the years. From the program director to the stage crew, everyone is an impacted person who has gone through RTA at some point during their incarceration, and most of them are playing themselves. This story is by and about them. There are no extraneous voices and minimal additional named characters. This shift in the narrative makes the film more of a reenactment than a biopic. 

The filmmakers give us glimpses into their lives in lockup. Cells papered with decades’ worth of drawings and writings with family photos sprinkled here and there in G’s cell, a typewriter propped on crates is one of the few privileges he is allowed. For Eye, he has a single drawing and stacks of dry and canned goods. He’s King Midas here, but only here. 

From G and Eye’s first encounter, we’re witnesses to the two men who have anointed themselves as Divine continually meet one another with animosity — a threat to the other’s status. At first, G doesn’t take Eye’s interest in RTA seriously because he struggles to engage with the exercises. He calls imagination exercises “goofy as f–k” because he’s not yet given himself permission to dream.

One such exercise is to describe their perfect place. The camera follows the circle of men whose eyes are closed. Some have soft smiles on their lips and tear tracks on their cheeks as they visualize this place. Every single person imagined a place with a loved one: human connection. Mike Mike speaks of his grandmother, who told wondrous tales of their homeland, Puerto Rico. He reveals that he’s never been and likely never will because of his sentence. So, he wants to, one day, go to his grandmother. That’s his perfect place. 

Through the growth and refinement of the show, Divine Eye finally does participate. We feel the reticence first and then the freedom. At the same time, G struggles with his own identity. His placement in the troupe is upended when Eye gets the leading role. This shift reveals that his confidence was as sturdy as a house of cards. The walls of G’s life crumble around him as he faces setback after setback.  

Sing Sing challenges perceptions and breaks stereotypes through the simple act of play. It is a revolutionary act of rebellion, resistance and liberation for these men to dance, lumber around as zombies, dress up and create while loving and laughing out loud. I cried, not because I was sad or mournful. I cried because I could feel their joy. And joy is a human right. 

Sing Sing opens in limited release on July 12 and wide on August 2, 2024.

Header by Kiernan Sullivan