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Most playwrights pen their first scripts when they are in high school or college, but playwriting is taught in other settings as well. In Kentucky, these include programs at Northpoint Training Center, a medium security prison near Danville, and at the Museum of the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville.

Voices Inside, the prison-based program, began because Robby Henson wanted to create an outreach component for Pioneer Playhouse in Danville, KY, an outdoor theatre founded and run by his family since 1950. Having worked with Danville playwright and Guild member Liz Orndorff to produce four of her plays, Robby asked her to brainstorm outreach ideas with him. They also consulted Curt Tofteland, founder of the acclaimed Shakespeare Behind Bars program.

Prison officials were receptive to the idea, a grant application to the National Endowment for the Arts was successful, and Voices Inside classes began in 2010, with Henson and Orndorff co-teaching. Tofteland is the Workshop Director. Northpoint’s website explains that Voices Inside uses “theater arts and creative thinking to increase communication skills, build self-esteem, and humanize and enrich the lives of those closed off behind bars.” Deputy Warden for Programming Gary Prestigiacomo believes the classes “unleash talent” and “bring out the artist within.”

A typical session begins with each person in the room sharing updates on both their personal lives and their writing. Several works-in-progress are read aloud with the students taking parts. Feedback follows. Class ends with recitation of the Voices Inside credo: “I am a member of a unique circle of trust. I will neither judge nor hold in contempt any member of this circle … Release the voice inside.”

Northpoint’s chapel is the venue for formal readings of Voices Inside plays each spring. Inmates perform alongside professional actors from Pioneer Playhouse. The audience includes inmates and invited community members. The plays also reach other Kentucky prisons, thanks to a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation that enables Henson to travel with a troupe of professional actors. And since 2012, Actors Theatre of Louisville has presented readings of inmates’ work with members of the Apprentice/Intern Company acting and directing.

An extension of the Northpoint program, Voices Inside/Out, was established by New York actor Synge Maher. While in Danville to perform at Pioneer Playhouse in 2010, she was invited to Northpoint’s playwriting class to read female characters’ parts. Inspired by the experience, she arranged readings of inmates’ plays in New York. Using proceeds from the readings, she and other New York actors established a residency program that has already brought four playwrights to Northpoint for one-week residencies.

Voices Inside writers are receiving other recognition, too. One inmate won the Playwriting Award from the American PEN Center’s Prison Writing Competition, three have won Honorable Mentions in the same competition, one was a Finalist for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and yet another had his script chosen for production during Schreiber’s Shorts, a festival of plays on the theme of freedom at T. Schreiber Theatre in New York this spring. In April, Tofteland took three plays written at Northpoint to Australia.

Among the benefits Henson sees for Voices Inside participants are “the discipline needed to write and revise, the teamwork required to put on a show, and the surge of self-esteem when you receive a standing ovation from your peers.” Orndorff agrees and is pleased that the inmates have discovered the “power of words.”

Positive experiences also resulted from a playwriting class at the Museum of the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville that culminated in a new play festival at Braille Readers Theater. Like the playwrights, festival actors and directors came from the blind and visually impaired community. “We must be doing something right,” says Museum Director Micheal Hudson. “Everyone is already talking about next year’s program.”

Students were “fearless in the topics they were willing to address, open to feedback and the revision process, and committed to maintaining a nurturing creative environment characterized by good listening and good humor,” according to the instructor, Constance Alexander, a playwright from Murray, KY. An insight she gained from her first experience teaching visually impaired individuals was that society loses a great deal by “isolating and marginalizing” those who are seen as different.

Could you and your colleagues offer a playwriting class to an underserved group in your area? “Even in the most unlikely setting, frustrated writers are waiting for the opportunity to express themselves,” according to Hudson.

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ngallclayton@dramatistsguild.com

Voices Inside instructors Robby Henson and Liz Orndorff

Braille Readers Theater participants