RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW
STORY CYCLES
THE STORY
VIDEOS
By the time we had transcribed all the phone calls, recordings, and handwritten pieces, the wealth of material at hand was a blessing and a bafflement. We had hundreds of stories illustrating a dozen critical issues contributing to our current state of incarceration and to who ends up living on death row. Almost all residents are low wealth. They are disproportionately racial and ethnic minorities. Most endured multiple adverse childhood experiences, from violence to physical and sexual abuse to impoverished conditions and high crime neighborhoods. Psychological disorders, including depression, bipolar disorder, and trauma-related disorders are rampant, and mental illness is itself a risk factor for landing in jail. To add to this perspective, hundreds have been convicted who were actually innocent of the crime.
How in the world to make sense of so many fundamental issues embedded in such authentic and insightful stories?
We went around and around the question. Should the stories be oriented by the issues raised, by other common themes, by chronology, or some other orientation?
In the end we tried them all. We tagged stories by issues and themes, such as racism and housing instability; tagged again by geographical location and age; again by ethnicity and race; and then literally laid the pages along a timeline on the floor, starting with birth and ending, at the far end of the hallway, with execution. We rearranged, cut, replaced, questioned. Finally, in any given stack, we tried to select the story that provided the most specific insight into a particular issue. In some cases, the stories were so similar it was hard to distinguish one from the other. While we couldn’t include but one such story in a cycle, we also didn’t want to exclude critical details essential to a reader’s understanding, so in a few instances we created a single composite story made richer by those inclusions.
The Story Cycles have been performed by actors for audiences of 500 and shared by students in a seminar classroom of 25. The stories have been used by book clubs, parishes, criminal and restorative justice conferences, and cultural organizations. Whether performed by actors or shared by community members, virtually or in person, the Story Cycles offer a powerful orientation for facilitated conversations, restorative circles, panels, and academic courses.
HOST A COMMUNITY READING
Sharing this call and response is powerful. The stories explore personal experiences with mental illness, poverty, educational policy failures, police indifference and violence, and judicial misconduct, even as they reveal great humor, affection, kindness, and transformative love. The stories are an invitation to enter a kind of communion with these men. Such connection is galvanizing and restorative, for what is liberation but a binding together in healing and restoration? We have created several cycles, ranging from 30-60 minutes.
If you’re interested in hosting a reading of the Story Cycle in your community, please use our contact form to submit an inquiry.
