Rehabilitation Through the Arts

The greatest joy that I’ve had teaching has been with incarcerated people. For nearly ten years as a Teaching Artist with Rehabilitation Through the Arts, I have taught songwriting and music theory at both men’s and women’s prisons in New York State. The participants of the RTA program are curious, creative, funny, and endlessly surprising. It has been a gift to me.

The Rehabilitation Through the Arts program is designed to develop life skills, and the recidivism rate for participants is dramatically lower than the national average. The classes are based on semester-long themes, and involve a multi-arts approach, with writing, drama, design, singing and musical composition.

Co-Creator and presenter of classes (with Phyllis Ross):

• “Music Theory in Action: Crafting a Song” Production:“RTA Songwriters Showcase,” presented to the prison population. A pilot and full-year class.

Co-Creator and presenter of classes (with Anne Lloyd):

• “Cabaret and the Broadway Connection” Production:“Bedford Sings Broadway,” presented to the prison population and an invited audience.

• “Animals and the Human Imagination” Production: “The Wiz” (with additional songs and dance sequences), presented to the prison population and an invited audience.

• “Love: an Exploration with Music, Art and Writing” Production: “Letters Unsent”.

• “Devising a Jukebox Musical” Production: “Amazing Grace,” an original musical, book and music by Michael Minard, lyrics from the stories of women of RTA, presented to the prison population and an invited audience. Directed by Anne Lloyd, choreographed by Aixa Kendrick, Produced by Katherine Vockins.

• “We Are Multitudes: We Are One” (with Anne Lloyd and Kimberleigh Weiss-Lewitt). Production: “I Met a Woman,” presented to invited members of the prison population.

• “Making Art (and Music) from Poetry” (with Anne Lloyd and Kimberleigh Weiss-Lewitt). Production: Original musical settings by members of Rehabilitation Through the Arts, of poetry of Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou and others, presented to an invited members of the prison population.

• “RTA Myth Workshop” (with Anne Lloyd and Kimberleigh Weiss-Lewitt). Created music with the women for the production: “What They Did for Love,” based on the Perseus Myth, presented to the prison population at the Volunteer Recognition Night.

AMAZING GRACE, a full-scale original musical production, was the culmination of a year-long process that began with the women’s writings in response to poet Marie Howe’s “The Boy.” The result was a musical comedy about a woman named Grace (the iconic song never appears in the show) and the myriad impressions she leaves on her friends and family.

After AMAZING GRACE, the women wanted to do another big production, and struck upon THE WIZ. Here is a short film by the Huffington Post about the RTA production that resulted.