From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. OK, here is something that we did not expect. Check this out. This was recorded on a stage in Brooklyn, St. Francis College. To be or not to be, that is the question. Same month in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. To be or not to be, that is the question-- whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them. Same month, a professional company in Boston, Massachusetts, at the Public Theater. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them. In Colorado, at Camp Shakespeare, you can actually hear the sneakers of the teenaged Hamlet squeaking. Why do you go about to recover the wind of me? Oh my lord, if my duty be too bold-- And at the Bay Area Shakespeare Camp, presented by the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, the kids put on a production that they have concocted that is made up entirely of death scenes from different Shakespeare plays. That seems because, um, kids love death scenes. No, no! The drink, the drink! O, my dear Hamlet, the drink, the drink! I am poisoned! [GAGGING] Eight-year-old Marissa Graham grabs her throat like a cat in a violent cartoon. Everyone in the production is eight, except for Polonius, who's six. The rest is silence. There's actually no way to tell how many productions of Hamlet are up in any given month. In summer 2002, when we first broadcast today's show and when we made these recordings, the American Theatre website listed 12 theaters doing Shakespeare's Hamlet, 11 productions of the play I Hate Hamlet, one production of something called Hamlet Dreams, and one theater doing the dreadful and feared Hamletmachine. Of course, Hamlet itself is kind of a weird play. The central character is in a situation that very few of us are ever going to find ourselves in. His uncle killed his father and then married his mother in order to become the king. The play is four hours long. The main conflict of the play is a guy debating, in long, complicated monologues, whether or not he should kill somebody. What is there in that for most of us to relate to? Unless, of course, we happen to be murderers. And what would the play be like if it were actually performed by murderers and other violent criminals? What would they see that the rest of us do not? Well, today on our program we answer that question. And the answer is, a lot. Over the course of six months, reporter Jack Hitt visited prisoners at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center-- which is a high-security prison-- from their first rehearsal to their last performance of Act V of Shakespeare's Hamlet. We're devoting our entire program today to the drama that he found there. Our program today, "Act V." We bring you what we believe is one of the most evocative productions of Shakespeare done anywhere in 2002, one you would have had a hard time getting tickets to-- it was only performed in prison. Here's Jack Hitt. The first thing they hand me when I pass through the thick iron doors is a tiny black box called a screamer. Pull the cord attached, and a phalanx of armed guards will sweep from all points of the prison and try to rescue me. I keep it in my pocket as I enter a huge yard with more than 1,000 prisoners wandering around. Some of the guys are playing handball against walls, some are lifting weights as I walk across, most are friendly. A couple of the skinheads, their arms dense with spider tattoos, narrow their eyes as I pass. Across the yard, there's a big building. A long corridor leads to a door marked Education Annex. Inside, there's room D-168, where a small, white-haired woman, Agnes Wilcox, is holding auditions for Hamlet. Let me see. If you're not Hamlet, Horatio, Laertes, Claudius, or Fortinbras, would you write down roles that interest you? Those roles are Clown 1 and 2, we've got Priest, we've got Osric. Dressed in loose prison uniforms, the actors sit around tables in the cinder block classroom beneath inspirational slogans-- believe in yourself, think positively. The aspiring cast is half black, half white, and ranges from young lifers in their 20s to old timers in their 50s. Because it's against the rules to congregate an audience of felons for the four hours it would take to perform the whole play, Agnes has staged one act every six months, starting in December, 1999. Tonight is the first read through for Act V, the final bloody climax. Many of the inmates here never finished high school, and all they had known of Shakespeare was the phrase "To be or not to be." Tonight they are hearing some of the other famous speeches for the first time. A pestilence on him, for a mad rouge. Rogue. Rogue. He poured a flax-- Flagon. Flagon of-- Rhenish. Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was sure Yorick's skull, the king's jester. Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back 1,000 times-- Most read-throughs with any cast are terrible. This one is terrible too. The actors know it. But they plow on through the script. An inmate named Paul, who serves as Agnes' assistant director, explains why. The first two or three acts I thought, oh no, there's no way. There's no way we're going to get this thing down and go and do a live performance and-- doing a soliloquy that's two pages long, I thought there's-- no, no. This is impossible. But what we're learning here, I guess, from performing it and hearing it done time again, was the "It'll be OK. It'll work out." The local critics agreed with Paul. The Act IV performance earned a review in the St. Louis paper. The actors were said to be commanding and compelling. With the entire performance, the reviewer wrote, "A 400-year-old text is restored to freshness." It seemed hard to imagine. I've seen Hamlet a dozen times. I've seen Kevin Kline do it at the Public Theater. I saw the famous Diane Venora version three nights in a row. I even saw Ingmar Bergman's production done in Brooklyn, performed entirely in Swedish. What else is there to learn from watching another Hamlet? But the truth is, this production was different. Because this is a play about a man pondering a violent crime and its consequences performed by violent criminals living out those consequences. After hanging out with this group of convicted actors for six months, I did discover something. I didn't know anything about Hamlet. Remember how it starts. Hamlet sees his father's ghost, who explains he was murdered by Claudius, Hamlet's uncle. The ghost commands Hamlet to avenge his death by killing Claudius. The play is basically Hamlet pondering this single horrific action, and whether he can be the man to do it. "To be or not to be." These days, when people say the name Hamlet, it's usually just a metaphor, shorthand for somebody who is afraid to act, who dithers and thinks too much. We almost forget just what action Hamlet was contemplating. These actors haven't forgotten. My name is Manuel Johnson, and I'm 36 years old. I'm here for two first degree assaults. I play Hamlet. When you're onstage doing Hamlet, what do you draw upon in your own experience to make the character come to life? The idea of wanting to hurt someone. I have experience hurting someone-- you know, to the point of their life may be in danger. I was a very confused and angry person. And you know, it escalated into, you know, me shooting two people and leaving them for dead. My name is Chris Harris. I'm 38 years old. And I play the fourth character of Hamlet. Let me explain something. The character of Hamlet is played by four people. They are all on stage at the same time, taking turns delivering the lines. Agnes did this partly to give more actors speaking roles and not saddle any one man with all that dialogue. But as theatre, it works. Hamlet's role is full of long soliloquies and rhetorical asides. This small gang of Hamlets, which mutters to itself and laughs at its own jokes, nicely captures that fractured quality of Hamlet's different personalities. And it's also bonded the four actors together. They call themselves "The Hamlets" and constantly talk about their character. To Chris, it seems like Hamlet is just the fifth guy in their odd clique-- another criminal with a complicated past. Let me put it in terms of the year 2000s. What we have is an upper-middle class youngster, 19, 20 years old, who comes from a well-to-do family. You know, they own quite a bit of land. The people in the small town respect him and love him. And his uncle murdered his father and is now married to his mother. So, I mean, all kinds of serious issues there, all kinds. Chris and the Hamlets practice alone most days. Finding time when the four can just get together by themselves is tough when there's always 1,000 inmates around. So they do it where they can. On every Sunday after the noon meal, the four of us will assemble. We'll have our little gray Hamlet books, and we'll proceed down to the track. And if you were simply walking by, what you'd probably hear is-- you'd hear this chatter of somebody giving their lines clearly, the rest of us with our heads down in the books, walking the line. Now, there are people-- because there are benches that are all throughout the inside of the track. So there are people that actually watch us. So you'll hear this old English-style speech. You know, "Ho, Horatio," and these people are like, "Ho, what"? One of the problems of doing any play in prison is that being a good actor is the exact emotional opposite of what it takes to be a successful inmate. Rather than close off all feeling and look tough, you have to open your vulnerable self up and withstand often cruel laughter as you try to find some authentic emotion within you. In this way, a level-four high-security prison is no different from high school. And so most of the inmates who audition for Agnes tend to be, you know, actor-y people-- the theatre-types of prison. Back in 1999, they just had to put up with abuse from the bigger, meaner inmates. But that changed. In fact, a lot changed, after Agnes cast the role of Hamlet's best friend. My name is Derrick, Big Hutch. I just-- I play Horatio, the scholar. You might be surprised to learn that Derrick "Big Hutch" Hutchison is big. He has a smooth, bald skull and hooded threatening eyes-- the kind of guy that if you met him, you might think, he's probably serving 120 years for armed robberies. And that would be correct. Hutch isn't like the rest of the cast, and he's the first person to tell you. In prison, you got this hierarchy system. Listen, let's compare it to the ocean. You've got the minnows, and you've got the killer whale. Minnow being the lowest, killer whale the highest. So, which are you, Big Hutch? I'm the blue whale. [CHUCKLING] Right. That mean I control the killer whales, and I can eat up the minnows if I want. And I mean, that's how it is. Most of the guys in Hamlet, they're minnows. I mean, I don't normally would associate with them. Well, as he puts it, the killer whale versus the guppies, we're all guppies and he's the killer whale-- That's Tim, who plays Osric. And as a minnow/guppy, his take is a little different. In dealing with an individual like a killer whale, a lot of it-- a lot of, even for him, is a lot of show. The guys see him out in the yard, all right. And now some of the guys that have come into Hamlet, seeing how he is in acting and the seriousness that he takes, he's not what his persona is. In other words, he's an actor. But Big Hutch is also a critic. His criticism is sharp and extends to places most actors avoid-- his own character, Horatio. I think he a chump, for real. Really? Yeah, I think he a chump. I mean, he supposed to be cool with Hamlet. And they're best friends. But I think Horatio is just somebody-- a sounding board for Hamlet. I mean, the majority of his lines is, eh, my lord, yes, my lord. I mean, if we're friends, we're going to communicate better than that. I mean, you're going to tell me your deepest secrets. So I want to know what you and Ophelia did last night. I believe it. He should have been a little bit-- show me that I'm truly Hamlet's friend. Don't wait till I get to the end of Act V and I'm getting ready to drink a cup of poison and you stop me. You know? Let me know down the line, man, that I'm really your friend, you know? Have you ever heard anybody talk about Shakespeare's characters this way? Hutch was always doing this-- talking tough, but then betraying a real gift for literary criticism. Call it his inner minnow. In fact, he pointed out a weakness in the structure of the story I'd never heard before in all my experience with the play-- that Hamlet's dilemma over killing Claudius isn't really much of a dilemma. I don't see the conflict. I don't see what Hamlet is dealing with, man, that-- oh, I should kill the king now. I shouldn't kill him now. No, you knew once your father said, revenge, you knew you was going to do this. So what's the hubbub about? Do it. I mean, that's the same way I couldn't see somebody raping my daughter or something and just sitting around. No, no, no, no, no. I got to do you, man. And that's just-- you done. That's why I think Hamlet is an old minnow too, man. He-- you know. Are there no reasons to delay taking swift action, even if you're convinced that you've been wronged? I mean, that's why he stages the play within the play, right? To make sure that Claudius is the bad guy. See, that's why we've got to go back. Now, if I'm strong enough to believe in ghosts, you know, I'm strong enough to believe what that ghost tells me. (CHUCKLING) If I'm strong enough to believe you're a ghost, then I'm sure you know what happened to you. Once Hutch got on this riff, he kept going. Denmark's a prison, Hamlet tells Rosencrantz, in Act II. And Hutch says you could do a version of the play that takes this central metaphor literally. All the characters in the play are types he sees in the yard every day. The Claudiuses, who will do anything for the emblems of power-- money, drugs, high-end tennis shoes; Poloniuses, who kiss up to the powerful; Rosencrantz and Guildensterns. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Oh, man. Administration puts some guys out there just to get some info. Yeah, you got your rats. And in Hutch's version, he solves the play's structural problem, fabricating a true dilemma for Hamlet by giving him good reasons to kill Claudius and not to kill him. This is the way it would happen. Claudius killed this guy here because the guy had the biggest dope business in prison, or something. Gertrude would be some sissy. You find them everywhere in prison. But the guy they kill be Hamlet's brother. So now, being in the prison world, he must defend that honor. But he got a girl talking about, you only got five years. You know, you did two. Do one more, they're gonna parole you. Come on home, because I love you, and I'm duh-duh-duh-duh. He got another brother in business out there that he can get with to help raise his status. So he got-- he got all these things to look forward to on the street. But if he let that killing go, he'll have the roughest three years of his entire life. He'll be the piss-pot of the institution. So I mean, he got this dilemma. Would he be strong enough to survive that and get out there? Hutch wouldn't. I ain't gonna lie. I-- hey. OK. Places, please, for the top of Act I. Two months after my visit with Hutch at the first read-through, I was cleared once again into the old classroom. The actors tell me they've been practicing their lines wherever they can, often shouting them from cell to cell. Agnes has also had local professors come in and lecture. She assigns the cast essays to write about their characters. And the Hamlets have been walking the track, memorizing their lines, as has Danny, the Gravedigger. This rehearsal, they're already tinkering with tempo and intonation. That first read-through seems like eons ago. This same skull, sir, was, sir, Yorick's skull, the king's jester. This? Even that. Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio. He hath born me on his back 1,000 times. And now, how abhorred in my imagination it is. My gorge rises at it. A lot of what you see looks like any rehearsal. Agnes is taking notes, a couple of guys are reading to themselves, and the occasional line reading devolves into laughter. I will fight with him, (CHUCKLING) upon the-- this thing. The scene that's really slaying everyone tonight is the first appearance of Osric, the king's toadying courtier. Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart a thing to you from his majesty. No, just talk to Paul. Just talk to Paul. Just talk to Paul? Yeah. Come on. Let's stay in the scene. My name is Timothy Lantz. I'm 38 years old, and I play the role of Osric. Osric is what they call a fop, which a lot of people tend to say, well, he's-- it's a sexual gender thing where he's homosexual or whatever, but he's not. What he is is a king groupie, a wannabe. Tim is the one member of the cast with screen time, one second of it. He used to live in California. And in a Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello revival, he was in the background in one fleeting camera pan, hitting a volleyball. Tim once ran a trucking company, and like most of the cast doesn't want to discuss his crime. But he does want to talk about how he researched his character-- in the TV room. There are so many fops in television and movies. Nathan Lane was a little bit too much. I think Robin Williams was a little too hyper. The one that really stood out was David Hyde Pierce, his character of Niles Crane. I'd watch Frasier and kind of look at how he did things and his mannerisms, and it worked out pretty good. I mean, sir, for his weapon. But in the imputation laid on him by them and his mean, he is unfellowed. What's his weapon? Rapier and dagger. What you say? Do you think your audience is going to be able to draw the very, sort of, fine distinction you're making between a fop and a gay person? Not really. To me, this seemed like an especially risky interpretation of the part. But Tim explains that folks on the outside have a TV movie understanding of prison sexuality. There is a small group of gay prisoners in the closet, another smaller group that is actually out, and then there's the vast majority of prisoners-- straight men, not having any sex at all. Just like outside, Tim says. OK, gentle folk, let's refocus. We're going to start where Laertes leaps into the grave. Putting on a play in prison is different. First, Agnes always has to deal with some last minute crisis. Tonight, one of the Hamlets can't come. He was assaulted and was placed in solitary for protection. Plus, everyone must be strip-searched in the side room before and after every meeting with Agnes or with me. Worse, it's incredibly hot. The room is stifling. The only relief is an ancient stand-up fan in the corner. And a lot of the time, the actors are just trying to figure out what their lines mean. Here's Chris, one of the Hamlets. There is a piece of dialogue I give in V.ii in which I'm talking to Horatio about how I got Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. And it starts like, "Up from my cabin, sea-gown scarf'd about me." Up from my cabin, my sea-gown scarfed about me. I didn't know what that meant. And one thing Agnes will do, she'll stop us in mid-line. And she says, what does that mean? Let's go back. Remember that what you're wrapped in is not a cloak. It's fog. How do you describe it? Sea-gown. Your sea-gown. Scarfed about me. Yeah. Your sea-gown scarfed about you is the fog. I knew that. Yeah. But now you've got to act it. The sea-gown scarfed about me is the fog. I'm out at night. And it's the flow of the words. Up from my cabin, sea-gown scarfed about me, groped I in the dark to find out them. Shakespeare really put some work in this-- and this is the only play I've really studied from him. But he really is good. OK. Pick up the pace, y'all. Zip. Zap. Zop. Zip. Zap. Zop. After a few months, the rehearsals begin to resemble a routine. They always start with some silly voice relaxation exercises. Zip. Zap. Zop. Zip. Zap. Zop. Zip. (DELAYED) Zap. No, that's not him. The cast is such a mix. There's Chris, who's a member of Toastmasters International, and when not rehearsing likes to listen to Journey on his Walkman, while his good pal Brat, a former gang-banger, has a subscription to a lapidary magazine. Then there's Edgar, a former Post Office employee, and Mike, a fight coordinator and a devout Wiccan. And then Stan, who's obviously a college educated businessman, now trying his hand at writing Zane Grey Westerns. And of course, there's Hutch, the killer whale. What keeps them coming back to D-168, where Agnes, this tiny, tough lady, bosses them around? Here's Edgar. She makes us feel human, man. She really does. When I go in there, I have to take my clothes off and get butt naked and bend over and spread my cheeks so some man can look up my butt, you know, all the dehuman-- the humiliating things that they do to us here. And when she comes in and does what she does, for that minute, them two and a half hours, all these guys with PhDs and can be doing other things, they come in, I at least can feel human in here. I think this is taking me to being sane. For just one day, just one day I'm sane enough, you know? This is Brat Jones, another one of the Hamlets. If you don't keep exercising your mind, then you start to lose it, right? You know, that's possible, right? This gives me an opportunity to see a society beyond what I'm used to. I'm familiar with rap music and videos and big butts on the TV and all that. But let me come back to something that I'm not familiar with. You know, let me get into something else. You know, that did open my eyes into getting into reading Sylvia Plath and Frost and Wadsworth and different other people. Everybody had powerful answers for why they were in the play. One guy with a third grade education level said that he was surprised to find out that he wasn't stupid, just uneducated. And for almost all of them, acting was beside the point. But one inmate got bit by the drama bug, and bit hard. His first step onto the boards was a revelation. I'm James Word. I'm 32 years old. And I play the role of Laertes. My wife told me that I should be an actor. And she's like, you can act. You should be an actor. She's had the opportunity to see me deal with certain people on certain levels, and she's seen me change my-- Wait. Certain people on certain levels. OK, come on. Let's-- as we say in the editorial business, let's air that out a little bit. Well, I've always wanted to be a con. And I've always wanted people to like me. I wanted to be liked. And the environment that I was in, people liked the bad guy. You know, those were the heroes in our neighborhoods, the bad guy. And so I went from this real quiet church guy to this real bad guy. You know, and I'd get around them, and I'd be like, yeah, I'm this and that, and would act it-- you know what I'm saying? Act big, bad, tough, and I don't care, when that really wasn't me. Because when I went home at night, I felt bad about what I did, and most of the time was scared to death doing what I was doing. And my wife saw that. And I think that's one of the reasons why she's like, you can be an actor. James Word looks like an actor. He's young and handsome with a smile that can carry him through just about any situation. He plays Laertes, the brother of Ophelia. For the first few acts, Laertes was played by an Amish pedophile. That's another story. But the Amish pedophile got transferred, and so it's almost legend in the prison now, like something out of 42nd Street. James Word stepped into the role. He created a sensation among the cast when they realized what a really forceful performance could do for a character. Word made a lasting impression, even on the killer whale. You come along and in Act IV, and you get this guy, James Word. And Word's playing Laertes. And he was hittin' it, especially when he was mourning the death of Ophelia. Is it Scene 4 or something? He makes his entrance. And he's going to be after the king and the queen. Stop them. Hold up. And man, you should have seen this guy Word man. He come in there like-- dropped to his knees. And he did, why! Why! I said, man, that should have been my part there. I knew I had done a good job. You know, I knew I had done a good job. But when it was over, you know, and everybody was leaving and shaking hands and interacting with each other, the comments that was coming afterwards-- you know, we had our questions and answers. So many people was just-- man, you were so good. Have you done this before? You should do this more. You should continue this. And that feeling for me was just-- it was one of the best feelings I've ever felt. It was like the day my daughter was born. And it made me want to be better. Not just in acting. I mean, it just opened up a whole world for me, you know? Like, man, if I apply myself, I can pretty much do whatever I want. O treble woe, fall 10 times treble, on that cursed head, whose wicked deed that most ingenious sense deprived thee of. Now, pile your dust upon the quick and dead, till of this flat a mountain you have made to overtop old Pelion, or the skyish head of blue Olympus. The first chance I get to see Word in action is at tonight's rehearsal, where Laertes goes to the grave of his sister Ophelia. Word was a natural, and talked about acting that way too. Laertes' emotions in the final act roller-coaster from grief to fury to shameful regret. To pull it off, Word channels Laertes' character in a way that should make any method actor cringe with jealousy. Coming into Act IV, he was very angry, violently angry. And I can identify with that, and I can play that role very well, because I've been playing that role all my life. Must there no more be done? No more be done. Lay her in the earth, and from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring. I tell thee, old churlish priest, a ministering angel shall my sister be when thou liest howling. You know what I'm saying? And Laertes, he falls into the manipulation. And he becomes a bad guy for a little while because he's being deceitful now. You know, I never really looked at it, and it's somewhat cowardly. And I can relate that to my past life as a criminal. To put a gun in somebody's face, that's an unfair advantage. You know, and that's a cowardly act. That's what criminals are. We're cowards. You know, when we're criminals, we are cowards. Do you feel like you can be Laertes because so much of Laertes is inside James Word? I am Laertes. I am. I am. Coming up, what the ghost of Hamlet's father can teach you about murder. In a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. If you're just tuning in, what we're doing today is that we're devoting our whole show to Jack Hitt's story, from the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center, where over the course of six months Jack watched prisoners rehearse and stage Act V of Hamlet. Again, here's Jack. As the performance day grew closer and I spoke to more and more of the actors, it became clear that each actor used his past, in dense psychological ways, to understand his part. All the Hamlets saw themselves in their version of the Dane, and Edgar would stop me in the hall to tell me that he thought evil King Claudius had some redeeming qualities. But for one actor, the relationship was even more complicated. He used his part to help understand his past. My name is Danny Waller. I'm 44 years old. The character that I've played was the ghost of Hamlet's father. The reason I chose that, when I first read the script, the words jumped out at me. And they made me feel things that I haven't felt before. What in your-- what in your experience drew you to those particular words? I took a man's life. And, uh, I felt he was talking to me through that-- that he wanted me to know what I put him through. "I am thy father's spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in fires, 'til the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold, whose lightest words would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, and make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres." There's one other spot that goes like this. "Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatched, cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, no reckoning made, but sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head." And it was pretty much the same way with him. He was taken before his time. So when you read the character, do you feel like-- who is talking when you say those lines? I'm the body up there. But the words are coming from mostly, uh-- William Pride, the man that I killed. He's mostly the one talking. There's not much defense between the actor and the word as you get with an actor who puts his or her training between the two. These guys call it like they see it. And it's true. It's just dead true. That's Agnes, the director. Besides putting on plays in the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center visiting room, she has mounted shows on more familiar stages-- the acclaimed Actor's Studio in New York, the Berkshire Festival in Stockbridge, and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut. After becoming the artistic director of the New Theater in St. Louis, she started an outreach program to take professional actors doing dramatic works by writers like Don DeLillo and perform them before prison audiences. In time, the prisoners became the actors. And in more time, this side project took over her entire theater company. Now this is what she does-- directing prisoners, who may not have the chops of professional actors but have an intimacy with the material that doesn't exist anywhere else. When Claudius is in the chapel and speaks about his sin and his regret and his ability to undo it, it broke my heart. Because the man playing it felt all of those things fully. And you know, I know these guys have deep regrets. But it was palpable. The audience was stunned. You could hear a pin drop. And that was especially true with the inmate audience. He says, oh, my offense is rank. It smells to heaven. It hath the primal, eldest, curse upon it. A brother's murder. A brother's murder. Pray can I not, though inclination be sharp as will. My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent. What if this cursed hand were thicker than itself with brother's blood? Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow? My name is Edgar Evans. And I'm 39 years old. And I play the king, King Claudius, in Hamlet. And like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin and both neglect. I don't consider myself no great actor or nothing, but I try to do the best I can. And when I did the speech, I was looking upward. The chapel was at an incline there. And I was just looking up toward the top, and it was like no one was there but me. I literally-- I honestly didn't see a soul in the chapel when I was saying this. Maybe even-- and I'm just-- I'm not saying this. It seemed almost like I was praying this actual speech to God. But O, what form of prayer can serve my turn. Forgive me my foul murder? That cannot be, since I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder-- my crown, my own ambition, and my queen. I have a wife and four kids. And by being incarcerated, I feel that I've really let them down. When I said that speech and my wife was here in the visiting room, I don't know if it had an impact on her. I don't even know if she truly understood all of the content. But I wanted her to hear that speech more than anybody. O, wretched state, O, bosom black as death, O, limed soul, struggling to be free art more engaged. Help, angels. Make assay. Bow, stubborn knee, and hearts with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the newborn babe. All may be well. Edgar wouldn't tell me his crime. Although I found myself playing a constant guessing game with all of them about this, they wouldn't discuss the past. That was then, they said. This is now. But I had to know. So one morning, instead of visiting, I went to downtown St. Louis, not far from the Arch, and sat in a records depository reading old case files. It was more horrible than I thought. One guy I particularly liked shot a man in the head twice at point-blank range. Another of my new friends raped his pubescent daughter, impregnating her. Later, there was an abortion. Another friend grabbed a man getting out of a car, put a gun to his chest during a robbery, and pulled the trigger. Others had sodomized children-- younger children, the age of my own children. I didn't fall asleep for a long time in my frigid Ramada Inn room. At 3:00 in the morning, I had one of those cinematic nightmares. I dreamed that a very good friend of mine, an editor at a magazine, had me over to dinner. She got angry with someone else there, pulled out a gun, and plugged him twice, right in the face. Then she asked me not to talk about it with anybody. I panicked. And the next thing I knew, I was sitting up in my hotel bed, panting like a sprinter. It didn't take Freud to figure out what it meant. Someone I knew and liked was a murderer. I wanted to talk to the cast about this, but I was anxious. I know this sounds crazy, but I was afraid it might hurt their feelings. I felt like they had betrayed me. But strangely, I felt that I had betrayed them too. There was only one day left to talk, just before the final performance. So before curtain, I asked Brat to sit down with me. I could barely spit out my question. You know, we came in here three months ago, or five months ago, and met you all for the first time as actors. And so yesterday, we decided to go down to City Hall and read everybody's record. And so we read everybody's record. And I have to say, since we met-- you know, since I met you as an actor first and now I know what you did, it's very hard for me to wrap my mind around this other guy that's on paper. And so I want to know how you do it. How do you square the Brat Jones of-- what was it, 13 years ago-- yeah, yeah-- with the one that I see on the stage tonight. It's taken a lot of practice. I'm trying to discover who I am now. It's not been easy. I was off into the drugs and all those things when I got locked up for that case. And I slowly had to come out of those things. Because I always knew in the back of my mind that I had already went to the lowest point in life. So now it was time to see what I could do as far as going to the highest point in life. It was a hard question for any of them to answer. They all said the same thing. But I'm this guy now, I'm not that guy. Are we forever the prisoner of our actions? It's a good question. It was Hamlet's question, and it's the unresolvable conflict in our penal system. Why do we put people in jail? To rehabilitate them and restore them to our company, or to punish them, regardless of how much they might change? One can't hold both these ideas in one's mind simultaneously. That's why our prison debates on TV and in Congress are so vehement and incoherent. The two sides cannot be squared by mere politics. They can't even be squared by the people at the center of the debate. Here's Danny. When I first got this sentence, I said, yeah, I'll go ahead and just die in here because I don't deserve to be out there the way I am. You know, that was 13, 14 years ago. But a person changes. I'm no longer the criminal I used to be. I know that I will not do any other crimes out there. But I took a man's life. Do I deserve to be out there? I cannot say. Hamlet, thou art slain. No medicine in the world can do thee good. In thee is not a half an hour's life. No medicine in the world, blah blah blah. I can't get it. I forgot. Line. The treacherous instrument is in thy hand. It's opening night, dress rehearsal. Word has flubbed his line again. Things aren't going well. The only time the authorities would allow a dress rehearsal is in the hour before actual curtain. This is the first time the cast has seen the acting stage, the first time in costume, the first time they have real props, skulls and shovels. The shovel is a story in itself, given every prison fear of shovels. You can use them to dig tunnels, remember. The authorities insisted on using only a flimsy cardboard replica. Everyone is tense, even Agnes. Guys, let's double the pace so we can get through this, get it all out. The sight is dismal. The sight is dismal. And our affairs-- We are in the prison chapel where their first performance will be held before an audience of inmates. Six months after my first visit, it is, at last, showtime. Alan, how are you doing today? Armed guards let the audience in the door, one by one. Agnes calls her actors together in a corner and gives them the final pep talk. Paul, Edgar, could I have you? OK. Things to think about. Make sure to stand still on yours and other people's punchlines. If something falls apart, pick it up, go somewhere with it. Make up words. I don't think anybody here has memorized it, so we're safe. And mostly, this afternoon people were working so hard I don't think you had much fun. Hard work's behind us. This is the night to just have a blast. Say "One for the team." One for the team. Ready, set-- hoo-ha! Once the play starts, Danny and Stan deliver their lines OK, but all that antique Elizabethan wordplay isn't connecting with the audience. But then midway through the scene, the crowd starts to really respond to the emotion in Ophelia's funeral march. Laertes is the last mourner, humming at the side of the grave, tossing rose petals on her corpse. Right away, the action picks up. The Hamlets appear, taunting Laertes about the sincerity of his grief. They quarrel and exchange insults. A duel is proposed, which culminates in the last sword fight scene. Come, begin! Most directors block the scene as a professional fencing match. Agnes has it looking like a knife fight in an alley. The audience totally gets it. Word holds his arms slightly out from his sides, his hand gripping his sword like he would a shiv. He and one of the Hamlets are circling each other, like thugs. Word jerks his shoulders forward-- a pure back alley feint, a fake movement to intimidate his opponent, something all of them have probably seen right in the yard. Then the room goes quiet, as the actors starts slicing one another, leading to Laertes' death scene. Hamlet, thou art slain. No medicine in the world can do thee good. In thee, there's not half an hour's life. The treacherous instrument is in your hand, unbated and envenomed. The foul practice has turned itself on me. Lo, here I lie, never to rise again. Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet. Let mine and my father's death be not upon thee. The audience, like a living thing, leans forward in unison to watch Word slide down the chapel wall and die. There are no cackles of discomfort, no shouts from the gallery. Just breathless silence, the silence of recognition. In all, there were three performances. And on the final night, before family and dignitaries, the entire cast found the magic that Paul said would happen during that first read-through. The actors knew that this would be the last time they get to perform as a group. So when Danny and Stan came out for their final gravedigger appearance, somehow those Elizabethan jokes worked. Art a heathen? How does thou understand the scripture? The scripture said Adam digged. Could he dig without arms? Having seen every performance, I can testify, the actors rose above their talents in that last show. Mike and Hudson as the belligerent priests, Buck and Tommy as the ambassadors, Sylvester's Fortinbras. You could feel the mutual support. Just as missed lines and other mistakes play off one another, and can spiral downward into fiasco, the rhythm of the room can go the other way too. Strong lines beget better performances. The gang of Hamlets came together in a way they hadn't before. That little mob seemed like one voice. But the real surprise for me that last night was Hutch. I am more an antique Roman than a dame. There's still yet some liquor left. It's here that Hutch's Horatio delivers his most famous line. The play is almost over. He's surrounded by corpses and speaks to his dying friend Hamlet. In the other performances, I always thought Hutch had been plagued by what you might call the Jack Nicholson syndrome. The actor's persona is bigger than any role he might play. But tonight, Horatio has Hutch under control and the audience in his hand. He has the one great line to deliver. And as Hutch might say, he nails it. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. So Hamlet dies, and Fortinbras takes over. And then the drums of Hamlet's funeral begin. On other stages, a curtain would fall. But here, beneath the cafeteria's unforgiving fluorescence, the actors just stop. From the back of the room, Agnes says simply-- End of play. The audience tonight is a mix of St. Louis' artistic elite. It's a theater crowd-- polite, well-dressed people. Many of them have helped fund this production. They want and fully expect to meet the talent afterwards. And for many of the actors, this moment-- they call it the cast party-- is the most prized. James Word and Edgar Evans mentioned it specifically when I talked to them. Just the chance to stand around in a room full of normal people, drink a Coke, and carry on about the play, the future, the weather, the freedom to chat and mingle, like you were in the lobby of a theater instead of a bulletproof visiting room. Hey, how you doing? I'm doing well. Good to see you. This is my sixth time here. Yeah, you come to all of them. Yeah, I appreciate it. And we thank you. Thank you very much. In a high-security prison, though, when a play is over, it's over. No sooner had the bows finished than Danny, who doubles as the stage manager, turns right around and starts frantically striking the set. The guards had informed everyone that they'd have about 10 minutes for the cast party. Like any play, all the work was for this moment-- to get to the end of the last performance successfully. And now that it's here, these few minutes are shot through with a kind of melancholy. Soon everything will end, and everyone will return to his pre-acting life. Here, that near future is visible. In the side room, everyone sees him, is the guard waiting to strip search them back into the yard. He wears a dull expression on his face and rubber gloves on his hands. But that would be 10 minutes from now. There's still time for pretending. Thank you, sir. Thanks for coming out. We appreciate the support. I really like this act. I like the-- It was so complicated. --counter-balance between the beginning and the end. According to the prison commissioner, 97% of the people locked up today will someday join us on the outside. Manuel is leaving for a halfway house in 48 hours. He could have been out weeks before but chose to stay in prison so he could finish the play. Hutch has a scheduled date for release. And a few more of the cast have parole board hearings coming up to decide whether they've changed enough and should be allowed to mingle with us on the outside. To that extent, this whole night, including the cast party, is just another rehearsal. Thanks for coming! Oh, you were great. Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. So, you think you like performing? Yes, ma'am. Well, you're very good. Jack Hitt is a longtime contributor to our show. Since we first aired this program back in 2002, most of the actors have been released from prison. Edgar, who played Claudius, is now the chief union steward at a hospital. Big Hutch works in public transit. James, who played Laertes, is starting a youth drama program in St. Louis. Tim moved to Hollywood to produce his own screenplays. Manuel got out and died in a truck crash in 2008. Danny, the guy who talked about speaking as the man he killed, is still serving time. Agnes has retired after two decades of running prison performing arts, but there's still an operation. Chris works there. Chris, Edgar, and Brat all continue acting in their alumni theater program. You can learn more about them at prisonperformingarts.org. This episode of our program was produced by Alex Blumberg, with Starlee Kine, Wendy Dorr, Jonathan Goldstein, and me. Our senior producer for this episode was Julie Snyder. Our technical director for our show is Matt Tierney. Production help with today's show from Diane Wu. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our programs co-founder Mr. Torey Malatia, or as we like to call him, Shamu. I control the killer whales. And I can eat up them minnows if I want. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.