Act V: Did you catch This American Life last weekend?
Submitted by Abigail on July 8, 2011
Re-aired and released via podcast last weekend, Act V is a 2002 This American Life episode about the piecemeal performance of Hamlet by a group of prisoners at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center. The performance was organized by St. Louis-based Prison Performing Arts, a multi-discipline literacy and performing arts program that serves incarcerated adults and children.
Reporter Jack Hitt follows the performers through the rehearsals and performance, documenting the process and overlaying the circumstances of the play with the circumstances of the inmates' lives, both before and after entering the Correctional Center.
Listen to the episode here.