Feature: Theater in Italian prisons plays important role in reforming convicts

The seventh most popular theater of Rome is inside a prison, and that actors are convicts. Surprised?

And that this is good for society, statistics have shown. Pleased?

"We have 350 seats and around 10,000 annual spectators coming from the outside," Fabio Cavalli, theater director at Rebibbia Prison, told Xinhua.

"During the last 14 years we have been working with more than 500 convicts," Cavalli said. "All of them have different backgrounds and are in prison with a sentence of at least three years. They have committed crimes from robbery to homicide, or belonged to criminal and mafia organizations."

Statistics carried out at Rebibbia Prison have shown that recidivism rate among those involved in theater activities significantly lowers.

"Italy's recidivism rate is at 68 percent, in line with recidivism rates in the world which are generally between 60 and 70 percent. The rate falls to 20 percent for convicts engaged in work activities, and drops below 10 percent for those engaged in theater activities," Cavalli explained to Xinhua.

There are a total of around 52,000 convicts in Italy detained in 198 prisons, of which more than half host an acting company. The number of acting companies is increasing and bringing good results year after year to the point that the Italian justice ministry has recognized theater activities in prison as an element which discourages recidivism and helps reintegration in society, as confirmed by Alessandra Bormioli, head of the study and research department at the Higher Institute of Penitentiary Studies (ISSP) under the Italian justice ministry, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Bormioli explained to Xinhua that the very first experiment was carried out early in 1959, when Dostoevsky's classic novel Crime and Punishment was put on stage by convicts of a juvenile prison in Rome.

"But the turning point was when Italy issued a prison system law in 1975 based on the concept of penitentiary treatment aiming at reeducation and best individual path to reintegrate convicts into society," she recalled.

Since then, the number of acting companies working in Italian prisons have seen continuous growth. Bormioli, also vice director of another noted prison in Rome, Regina Coeli, noted that several prisons in Italy even host two or more acting companies.

"Regina Coeli has two, and one of them is working in particular with foreign convicts, making them perform in their mother-tongue languages thus helping mutual knowledge and integration," she told Xinhua.

But how do acting companies get in touch with prisons and start a program? "They are generally not-for-profit acting companies selected by the prison's director along with the education area head," Bormioli explained. Both professional actors and volunteers take part in the activities, which also give convicts the opportunity to perform out of prison in important theaters of Italy, such as the Argentina opera house in Rome, she noted.

This avant-garde penitentiary treatment model has been very much appreciated both in Italy and abroad to the point that an annual festival of theater in prison named Destini Incrociati (Crossed Destinies) has been established to present these works to a larger audience, Bormioli also added.

But why those convicts who love theater do not commit crime anymore?

"Some 95 percent of convicts in the world are people who did not have the possibility of a regular education or job ... there is a very high relation between cultural level and presence in prison," Cavalli went on explaining.

Though some one third of convicts in Italy are sent to school in prison, it is not easy to bring them close to something that they rejected in their childhood.

"Things are different for theater. None of the convicts had ever entered a theater before, which means that for the first time in their life they are experiencing a new world that does not teach them theories through a book but asks them to go on stage and talk to the public, creating a collaborative team," Cavalli elaborated.

"Theater means for them a great moment of evasion. Just think that when they acted in The Tragedy of Hamlet they were handling weapons, which in their real life would only mean an increased punishment. Theater means total freedom to them," he highlighted.

Cavalli told Xinhua he was able to achieve objectives that would be very difficult to achieve with professional actors. "Their ability to interpret Shakespeare's characters, for example, is extraordinary. It is because they feel it very close to their life experience," he said.

Cavalli has conducted studies on the relation between neuroscience and theater-making, is a professor of theater in prison at the Roma Tre University in Rome and also part of a committee given the task by the justice ministry of laying down guidelines for a prison reform. "We are working at indicating in the reform theater activity as a fundamental instrument of social integration," he told Xinhua.

"And once they have served their sentences and get out of prison, we continue to follow them," Cavalli went on saying. "We are very glad to see that most of them do not give up their new passion and continue to go to theater, some of them help with the theater activities inside prisons and around 10 percent even become professional actors," he underlined. Endit