Featuring a cast of former prisoners, the new film “Sing Sing” tells a true story about the transformative power of art.
I try to watch movies without knowing anything about them. I avoid trailers, production notes, and anything that might spoil the movie by setting expectations before I see it. So I went into “Sing Sing” not knowing that many of the actors had been in prison, playing variations of themselves. Even without knowing that, the performances felt different. Not only powerful and impressive, but also fueled by a fire that comes from real life experiences.
The film is inspired by true stories and characters, but dramatized for the screen. Colman Domingo plays Divine G, who is imprisoned in Sing Sing for a crime he did not commit. Divine G finds meaning in life by acting and writing plays in the theater company Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA). The theater company is made up of incarcerated men who have worked on plays before and one newcomer (Clarence Maclin, who plays a character based on himself).
Photo credit: Dominic Leon
The RTA program
Clarence Maclin is a former RTA employee at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
“The main goal of RTA is not to train actors,” Maclin explained. “The goal is to create better people through art and productions. Through all of these things, we learn valuable life skills and gain a lot of insight into who we are and who we can be.”
Maclin became a member of the steering committee of the RTA at Sing Sing. He joined the program after realizing that the actors he had seen in a play performed at Sing Sing were not from outside, but were incarcerated men like himself. And he wanted to be a part of it.
There is a scene in the film where he talks about Shakespeare and King Lear.
His character says, “Some of the things the brother said in the book really touched me. What did the brother say? ‘When we are born, we cry because we are born fools.’ And I said, whoever wrote that must have made an offer beforehand.”
For Maclin, this reflected a real connection.
“When I first heard it, I wanted to perform it, just because that’s what it sounded like to me,” Maclin said. “It sounded beautiful. It seems like he takes time to paint a picture with his words. I just fell in love with all the jargon and the performance you can get in a Shakespeare production. You can be very brave.”
Maclin also gets to deliver one of Hamlet’s monologues and he is brilliant. In fact, this scene made me wish we could see a full performance of Hamlet with Maclin and his former RTA colleagues.
The crew used two disused prisons to film the movie.
“Every one of us prisoners had to go through one of these phases,” Maclin explained. “We’ve all been here before. And I actually had to play a scene where I’m sitting in a cell by myself, reaching for the script, which is about a cell that’s directly below a cell that I was actually in when I was in that prison. So it was very unsettling to go back in and sit in the same prison clothes. But the purpose of what we were doing outweighed any fears.”
Director and screenwriter Greg Kwedar insisted on using former RTA members to tell the story authentically. In a scene involving a review board, one of the people reviewing Divine G’s case asks him about the RTA program and his acting, then asks him if he’s acting for the review board now. This scene was truly a slap in the face and the dialogue is taken directly from the transcripts.
The film paints an inspiring and hopeful portrait of these men and the RTA program. Maclin hopes the film will help humanize people like him.
“I would like people out there to understand that the people in there are people, actually human beings,” Maclin said. “If you look around you, you might find some of us who are close to you, some people who reflect us. They need the same love, the same trust. They need the same empathy. They need all of those things to become productive and to be able to return to society and do good. I think they need to understand that we are much more than the sum of our mistakes and that we still have the ability to change and to enrich society in a positive way.”
“Sing Sing” challenges negative stereotypes with this deeply personal story about the transformative power of art.
Recommended visit:
“Weeds – Little Mermaids” (1987)
“Caesar Must Die” (2012, Italy)
“Alive Inside” (2020)
“The Art of Imprisonment” (2021, Australia)
This is evident from the press notes for the film and is something that not only film critics should think about.
This is a brief guide to help you use inclusive language when discussing Sing Sing. The film is based on the real-life program Rehabilitation Through the Arts, and its cast includes formerly incarcerated actors and graduates of the program. Many conversations about the criminal and correctional systems have traditionally used language that dehumanizes those affected by both. We know that words have the power to shape narratives, and we have the opportunity to change these conversations for the better.
LANGUAGE TO USE
Put the person first, before their relationship with the justice system.
Person convicted of a crime
Person convicted of a crime
Person on probation
Detained person
Person who was previously imprisoned
LANGUAGE TO AVOID
Avoid pigeonholing a person based solely on their relationship with the justice system.
criminal, offender, felon, convict
Released on probation
prisoner, inmate
Former convict
The language project – From the Marshall Project, a curated collection of writings and resources that explore the human impact of the words we use when discussing criminal justice, the prison system, and the people affected by both.
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