i really like the metaphor you used, you read my eyes like parables. that s almost something like shakespeare himself would write. so i really like that. i m from the hood you know. not to separate the hood from anything else, because the hood commercial now, whatever, right? but shakespeare was something, you know, i never thought that i would experience in my life. since i came into contact with shakespeare, i see a lot of those parallels that correlate with urban life. essentially macbeth and the rest of the characters are committing either immoral, unethical or criminal acts. we would say criminal acts. that s what we re in here for, committing criminal acts. it s made me more introspective. man, a sky has the residues of sunlight, but faded away like butter on cornbread. it should be approaching in a moment. macbeth is getting rid of them, that s how he keeps his hands clean. he s going to have the lower
yet that s the way shakespeare s plays were originally done. your authority, it is i hecatie with an awesome sight. bow down and acknowledge my might. it has by magical words i shall give the illusions of spirits with much nerve as the actors were performing, i looked over my shoulder and i noticed iris was silently reciting every word of the play. so i just focused the camera on him and i thought it was pretty cool that he was getting to see his own words come to life and enjoying it so much. he shall bury it. i tell you hags that this is hey! [ applause ] this is the first time i have seen him when he was speaking, i knew everything. i knew the words as he was saying it, right?
one cell, completely unannounced, mentioned shakespeare, and the offender started quoting from shakespeare. had no idea that this was coming and that s how shakespeare in the shu was born. and they re going against banroll. still did not answer the question about the third murder. i guess you can look at him as being like the program has inmates rewrite shakespeare in a way that reflects their own experiences. during our shoot the group was working on macbeth, a play about ambition, assassination, and a warlord s lust for power. i took macbeth to the streets and what he did, he went, to the hood, to the housing projects, you know, guys that don t got none, and he used nobody s. nobody s know. leon benson, serving 60 years for murder, read one of his passages to the group. you read my eyes, i was pressed for him because of my special preparations for tonight s special feast.
ranking ones do the job for him so he don t have to. just days before our shoot, in mate iris white had completed a 3 1/2 year shu term, and had been transferred to general population. he was allowed to return to the shu to finish his work on the script. now he gets to join this group of general population inmates, who will bring the script to life. it was really funny, because some of the inmates were playing witches in macbeth, kind of dancing around, these big old guys, big, dangerous, scary-looking guys going whoo! [ laughter ] an all-male cast is something we need to get accustomed to. we re not used to it. the population isn t used to seeing them playing women, and
having feces or urine thrown on you. spit, blood, semen, anything you can think of has happened in this building. but for inmates in the shu, the monotony breeds a horror of its own. they told us what it was like to spend 23 hours a day in a windowless concrete cell. sometimes for years at a time. you re always trying to find a way to come up for air. the place suffocates you. you know what i m saying? it s a tone, for me, you know? it s like the tomb. it s like a tomb, a concrete tomb. what if they sent these punk ass dudes against and he would have succeeded in killing them during our first day on the shu we walked into a heated exchange about murder. the killer. so what you saying the killer? you say but it wasn t about prison violence. saying macbeth sent him. here s what i m saying. it was about shakespeare. what was really bizarre,