This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:03] HANNAH CHODOS: How would you define the term breakthrough for yourself? Here's what I was talking about. I had to be real with myself because I'm talking about change in my life. I could have easily went and played the favoritism, but I knew for this to work and because I was given the responsibility of this, I had to give everybody an opportunity.

[0:25] HANNAH CHODOS: Now that you have heard the story. I'm HANNAH CHODOS, program manager of the Actors Gang Prison Project.

[0:30] RICHARD LOYA: I'm RICHARD LOYA, co-program manager of the Actors Gang Prison Project.

[0:35] HANNAH CHODOS: You're listening to the Afro-Existential Podcast.

[0:39] RICHARD LOYA: On the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:43] Indira G. Wilson: Doesn't that feel sexier and badass? Anything else?

[0:50] Indira G. Wilson: Welcome to the Afro-Existential Podcast, a podcast and audio play in one. I am one of your hosts, Indira G. Wilson.

[0:58] Blaine Teamer: And I'm Blaine Teamer. This season we'll be presenting a brand new audio play entitled Pandora's Trunk and a new interview series entitled The Breakthrough From Vision to Fruition.

[1:08] Indira G. Wilson: In this series, we hear from people who took a great idea and made it a reality. We want to know how they did it and how they got over the obstacles along the way. We hope that it helps and inspires you to make your great idea a reality.

[1:23] Indira G. Wilson: In this episode, we have part one of our two-part interview with HANNAH CHODOS and RICHARD LOYA from the Actors Gang Theater Company's Prison Project.

[1:35] Blaine Teamer: But before we go to commercial, here is a sneak peek of our next audio play, Pandora's Trunk. Pandora Washington is on a quest to find her birth mother. In this scene, she meets Sister Rosemary, who tries to explain to Pandora how she was seduced by the new minister of the first and last most faithful harvest and grains at Evanethic Church.

[2:00] ♪ Musical number: "Pandora's Trunk" — performed by Blaine Teamer ♪

[3:42] Indira G. Wilson: And we'll be right back after a brief commercial break.

[3:50] Indira G. Wilson: Hello again. Welcome back to the Afro-Existential Podcast and our interview series, The Breakthrough from Vision to Fruition. In this interview, I spoke with HANNAH CHODOS and RICHARD LOYA of the Actors Gang Theater Prison Project. I asked about the history of the theater company and how the prison project started.

[4:11] HANNAH CHODOS: The Actors Gang is a theater company in Culver City for the last almost 15 years, but it was founded in 1981 by the actor director Tim Robbins and a bunch of his partners when they graduated from UCLA. And they were interested in the theater that meant something in the community and in the world. And so they were just like underground making theater in LA. And in 1984, there was like a seminal moment for the company, which is the Olympic festival came to Los Angeles. And as part of that Olympic festival, there was like an arts festival that was here in LA. And there was a company there as part of it called Teatro du Soleil, which is still operating in Paris, and that company has been revolutionary.

And they were offering workshops. The Actors Gang attended these workshops. And that is where the company learned this particular form of theater called Commedia dell'Arte. They learned it from Teatro du Soleil. And that really became the central vocabulary of the company. And since then it's been the training that we do together. It's our common language.

[5:15] HANNAH CHODOS: Commedia dell'arte dates to probably about the 14th century in Europe, in France and Italy. And it is the sort of roots of our sitcom form. What the way that we practice, it's got 14 stop characters, these archetypal stop characters. And in our form, it's which we call the style, capital T, capital S, the style. It's basically a set of rules for being on stage. So it's a structure for improvisation. Two other things to mention about it are the states, the four fundamental states of emotion. So when we first start out, we're really quite rigorously trying every time we come on stage to be in one of four fundamental states of emotion happy, afraid, sad, or angry. And I think that's really relevant in the work because it's like a clear way for us to enter embodied state of emotion.

It's a really important element of what we do is actually like through the body experiencing these four states. And then also the mask, artisanal masks that are made by mask makers, and they are sacred objects for us, and they are the masks of these archetypal characters, or in whiteface, which is like a canvas, and we paint on the mask of the character. And so that's another essential part of this work, is really assuming the image of the character. So it's like we step into a character, and the character can be a filter for these very deep fundamental human experiences, these emotional states. And then we tell stories together in ensemble. We learn how to be with each other on stage, creating these stories together.

[6:51] HANNAH CHODOS: 15 years ago, one of the members of the company, her name is Sabra Williams, and she had the idea to bring this training into prisons. And really, I think where that idea came from was as a company, like as members of this company, we noticed that when we do this work, we have to engage a number of important skills, including regulating ourselves, learning about ourselves, and looking at ourselves and processing our emotional lives and also being together with others in a good way. Like we had to do these things, which were at bottom like healing processes, really. And so the idea was to offer this in prisons that the arts and our practice in particular has this potential for like very deep healing work and work for being in groups and work for being with ourselves and also the experience of freedom. I think we as artists, we had that. And so that's what we were offering when we went inside. So that was about 15 years ago.

[7:45] HANNAH CHODOS: So often people want to come into an environment as an expert, thinking they know how to fix the problem, without having any of the people who they're serving be a part of the process of fixing the problem, right?

[7:58] RICHARD LOYA: Yes, yes, exactly. The other important part of this story is that the program evolved in partnership with the men and women who were doing the program. So what the program looks like right now is really different from what it looked like then, both structurally and in terms of the content of the curriculum and what we do actually in the class. And that's because we were receiving feedback all the time from the men and women doing the program. The fact that Rich and I are here together today with you is really the outcome of a very of a dream that was there at the beginning, which was really about partnership. I think one of the reasons that this program is successful is because we really enter with the arts and we enter as partners.

I know that Sabra, she came from the UK. She and she had worked in prisons in the UK. So she had the experience of working in carceral settings there with a theater company. I know for her and for us, whom she asked to join her when we first started out. And for Tim Robbins, who really is a co-founder of the project, it was uh there was an inspiration that came from our experience together, from our experience working together. As an ensemble, the Actors Gang for many years has trained together once a week. So we have a weekly workshop where we just come together and practice together. We train in the style, we experiment, we work on plays, and it's just our way of every week coming together and working it out, staying in practice and keeping our practice up as artists. And really, I suppose Sabra had an experience of being in prison, but really it was like this is valuable for us. And so that's where the offering came from. It was from our own experience.

[9:28] Indira G. Wilson: So often, especially like it out here in the entertainment business, like you hear someone's narrative, and it was like, oh, I was just walking down the street and I tripped into a movie set, and now I'm in the movies. So you have this idea, we want to do something in the prison system. And then so how do you connect with the prison system? And then is the prison system receptive to the idea? And how long does it take you to get in the prison system? When we get to Rich, it's like, how you know, did you just sign up and you were in and everybody accepted it? And next thing you got a job at Actors Gang.

[10:01] RICHARD LOYA: Yeah, yeah. So Rich, I'll talk a little bit and then I'll have you talk a little bit because these are great questions, and I'm glad you want to hear it all. I really have to give credit to Sabra Williams and Tim Robbins here because it absolutely is true that when we first started going in, that we were scratching and fighting and kicking our way in. And just like broadly speaking, the culture of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has undergone many changes throughout the years, a history longer than I I'm aware of. But in the last 15 years, for sure, there's been huge changes, both in the world out here, the way that we are talking about and thinking about our carceral system, and also within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in terms of how staff and I think the in my population think about what's what is happening in prisons.

[10:54] HANNAH CHODOS: And so there was a huge push that happened. Tim and Sabra together were advocating in Sacramento, um, in DC, fighting really hard to get recognition for the value of arts and corrections and succeeding together with many other organizations who were in the same fight together. And that's of course part of a larger movement. The shape of the program changed. And Sabra and Tim were working really hard just to get enough money to make it possible for us to go in. And at this point, we over time we were able to establish ourselves and get consistent funding. That's also we have an incredible staff of six at the Actors Gang Prison Project. Our director of operations, Catherine Carner is working on getting us that grant money constantly.

And it was really one of the participants in the program at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco. His name is Chris Bisbano. And there was one time when we did a session and we went away, and he didn't want to wait for us to come back. So he basically started a theater company inside on his own, with together with his partners in there. And Sabra tells the story that she got a call and it was like, hey, there's a play. Are you guys gonna come and see it? And so we like showed up and they had created this incredible piece of theater based on the tools that they had learned in our program. They had created this whole play. Some of the best theater I have ever seen in my life has been the theater created by incarcerated people, just using the tools that they have.

And it's really amazing. And so that experience shifted our understanding of what we were doing and really created the current structure that we work in, where we do a workshop and then we turn it over to the participants and they create their group. So I want to pass it to you, Rich also to talk about what it was like from your perspective.

[12:38] RICHARD LOYA: What I can talk about, Blaine is the history of our group. I'll never forget September 19th through the 26th, 2016. I was fortunate to work in the program office. And so through the program office is where usually firsthand we hear of new programs coming in. My boss was the Lieutenant Crenshaw. When the lieutenant brought it to me, he goes, Hey, a new group, a new program is coming in. It's Tim Robbins and some actors. That's all that's all I got. It's Tim Robbins and some actors. That's all he had. And so, okay, I recognize the name, Lieutenant, but what is it about? He goes, I don't know. You guys are gonna be acting with some actors. So come up with a list of 25 of the men in the yard and bring me the list.

At that time, Blaine, I knew like a real good group of men that were in the same process of me making change. I said, Okay, Lieutenant, I'll put that list together. I know a group of men that are in the process of change. So he says, Who are you thinking about? So they were involved in other programs already, other classes, and so they're all doing positive things. And so Lieutenant says, No, I don't want them. Why does it always have to be that same group to get into good groups? It threw me off. I'm like, bring me the F up, bring me the bad, bring me the worst. Know who they are, have them on that list. And I'm like, all right, Lieutenant, I'm gonna get you a list of what you're asking for.

But if something happens, it's not on me. And he goes, Just go do it, go take care of it. I literally went with a piece of paper with the memo that this new program was coming, the actor's gang, and it's Tim Robbins with some actors. So here's what I was talking about. I had to be real with myself because I'm talking about change in my life. I could have easily went and played the favoritism, my homies, played the homie card and go get some of my homies that I knew were in the process of change and fill up the 24 other spots with most of them. But I knew for this to work, and because I was given the responsibility of this, I had to give everybody an opportunity, which meant I have to go to all the races and ask them if they want to be part of this.

And so I did that. One by one, I went to every race, and you go to the one that has the juice, mainly. Right. Because if they say yes, then you get them to agree, they're gonna join. And so in doing that, first group I approached was the blacks. And I'm like, hey, so I'm trying to pitch them. So it was funny that you had this question like what would be the pitch to get the biggest check. So I'm like, I had to do some convincing, and just with what I was given. I don't know, man. It's Tim Robbins, some actors. Maybe they're gonna help us act. I don't know. It's a self-help group, they're coming in, it's for a week. That was another thing. Usually, guys don't want to commit to a whole week workshop from 9 to 1.

But at the end, I'm like, hey man, what do we got to lose? Surprisingly, almost every group, because I know the blacks did it, the whites did it. They would say, Rich, are you doing it? And I'm like, Yes, I'm gonna do it. That's why I'm asking you. Like, all right, sign me up. So once I got the blacks to say yes, and then I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go to all the races, I'm gonna ask everybody. I'm gonna ask the whites, I'm gonna ask the others, which others are represented by like islanders, Samoan, Filipino, Vietnamese, and then northerners. That was a whole nother issue that I was gonna deal with because you have southern Hispanics and you have you had Northerners, and uh getting them all agreed to do this.

And once they said yes, Blaine, I'm like, oh wow, shit, it happened. All right. So there I go with the list to lieutenant. And so I show a lieutenant the list, and he's like surprisingly looks at the list and says, He signed up. And I'm like, You told me to get the F ups. They're here, Lieutenant. So they're coming.

[16:12] HANNAH CHODOS: Where did that come from to be able to talk to so many different people in a language that they could get?

[16:20] RICHARD LOYA: Oh, great question. I'm like straight across with everybody. And I think they knew that because in the position where I was at working, I can help them get a bed move. I can help them get moved into another dorm, and I would do it for everybody. So that's how when I would be asked, Rich, well, are you doing it? When they knew that I'm doing it, they knew I was doing it for the right reasons. Because I cared enough for we didn't know what we're gonna get into, but they knew I'm gonna be committed to this. And so I think knowing that, and Blaine always having like leadership skills, and it was sports through sports, being able to ask, because again, you can't be seen, you can't be playing certain sports with different races.

[17:01] HANNAH CHODOS: I just want to say that I have seen Rich diffuse so many situations, draw people into the circle with such skill. And like with the question that you ask Blaine, like, where does that come from? Like, how does he do it? From my perspective, looking at Rich, I can see that having lived through incarceration, he has found a way to bring people together in the worst circumstances. Because as you can hear, prison is like highly stratified by race, by affiliation. It's almost like I think of prison, it's almost like like a prism, like a like an intensified, concentrated version of what we live in out here: racism, homophobia, misogyny, like structures of power, all those things that exist in prison, but intensify.

So I'm just, I think when that's why you can hear that, like we were fighting on the outside to come in, creating this project, and our partners inside were fighting for our program on the inside. And now we have the benefit of Rich out here working with us, and what that buys us is just immeasurable. To have his experience, that's an incredible asset for the program.

[18:06] RICHARD LOYA: Thank you, Hannah. So that's the history of our group starting in there. And just know this, Blaine. Okay, so now we got like the personnel, right? One, the people that Lieutenant was asking for. And so now we're in this group. And so another thing that I know as individuals, the gang brought like interest in us in the title, the actor's gang. Some of us thought, because in conversations we had, I thought, okay, maybe it's gonna be like some formally incarcerated, just like us, and now they're in Tim Robbins' crew. He's you know hiring them as actors. And so we're in the gym. Blaine, if you can picture, imagine in the gym setting, there's we're in a circle of 25 of us, and so we're waiting. It's it's 8:45 in the morning.

We're waiting, waiting. And then they announce they've arrived. The gang, the actors gang people are here. And so we look, and I'm sorry, Hannah, you hear this, but here comes three white people and an English woman. They're like, where's Chuck Knight? Where's our exact? Yeah, exactly. Like, where's Daddy Trahole?

[19:12] Blaine Teamer: That concludes part one of our interview with Hannah and Richard from the Actors Gang Theatre Company's Prison Project. We'll be right back after a brief commercial break.

[19:23] Indira G. Wilson: Hello again. We are so glad you joined us for another episode of the Afro-Existential Podcast. Please check out part two of our interview with HANNAH CHODOS and RICHARD LOYA from the Actors Gang Theater Company's Prison Project in our next episode. And take a moment to visit us at our website, afroexpodcast.com for more fun and insightful content. And check us out on Instagram at afroexpodcast. Anything else? Email us your comments or questions at afroexpodcast@gmail.com. Anything else? And a very special thanks to the brilliant Lache Tomlison who plays Sister Rosemary in our upcoming audio play, Pandora's Trunk. Again, thank you for joining us. I'm Blaine Teamer.

[20:12] Indira G. Wilson: And I'm Indira G. Wilson. And as always, have a great day on purpose. The Afro-Existential Podcast is part of the Broadway Podcast Network.