When a siren erupts in Sing Sing – a penitentiary, as depicted in the film of the same name – Colman Domingo’s John “Divine G” Whitfield is among the men in its yard who immediately drop down to the ground, ensuring prison guards don’t mistake them for a threat. He flattens himself, contorting his body so that ankles, palms, fingers, cheeks and even the ridge above his eyes appear to be touching the grass at once. It’s as if he has to let out all the air, along with his humanity, to get down that low. That’s how prison does it.
We see the cell searches and security checks, and the rigid and soulless ways the men serving out sentences must compose themselves, throughout Sing Sing. But the delicate and affectionate film, following the people performing Shakespeare within the maximum-security penitentiary, tends not to dwell on the dehumanizing moments. This is the story about how they escape all that through the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program, which brings dance, theatre, music and writing workshops to prisons.
The program, which currently operates out of eight New York state facilities, began at Sing Sing in 1996, after some of the men there sought help writing and producing a play to perform for their incarcerated cohort. They recite the bard behind bars and find healing in a safe space where they can express themselves while building connection and empathy.
Sing Sing, directed by Greg Kwedar, largely works as an inspiring testament to the RTA program, which is an avenue for restorative justice that has a proven success rate as far as recidivism goes. Only 3% among RTA participants return to prison, according to the program’s site, a stark contrast to a national average flying well past 60%. The film is loosely based on John H Richardson’s Esquire article The Sing Sing Follies, which covered the RTA program’s 2005 production, Breaking The Mummy’s Code, a raucous time-travelling musical revue that has pirates, gladiators, Freddy Krueger and Hamlet.
Kwedar, who co-wrote the screenplay with Clint Bentley and also spent time as an RTA instructor, anchors the film in the friendship between Whitfield and fellow RTA participant George “Divine Eye” Maclin. The real Maclin is here, giving a raw and heroically vulnerable performance playing a version of his younger self at the time he played Hamlet in Breakin’ The Mummy’s Code. The real Whitfield – who Domingo plays with complex and rich layers – makes a small cameo alongside a cast that is mostly comprised of RTA alumni.
As in real life, Domingo’s Whitfield and Maclin make an engaging but unlikely pair. The former, a seasoned and enthusiastic participant in the RTA program, is upright and earnest. He’s eagerly building a community in the prison through theatre, though at times you wonder if he’s actually just seeking out an audience for his own pretensions.
Maclin, on the other hand, is ferocious. He’s got a pit bull demeanor, with shoulders hunched into a defensive position, as if always ready to pounce. We first take notice of Maclin when he’s shaking others down in the prison yard. But in Maclin’s swagger, Whitfield sees a performance and a magnetism that could just as easily work on stage.
He enlists Maclin for the theatre program and is then stunned by the fondness the recruit has for Shakespeare. At one point Maclin suggests King Lear could have only been written by someone who did a bid. Not a surprise that Sing Sing’s finest moments captures how art speaks to its characters, and their reality.
Kwedar and company intentionally blur the lines between the film’s fiction and reality – or docudrama and documentary. Scenes with the RTA alumni recreating improvisational workshops effectively means they’re just improvising again. And often those participants are simply relaying their own authentic experience to each other, and the camera.
Whitfield and Maclin even have writing credit, and all the RTA alumni involved maintain an ownership stake in the film for sharing their lives while working in collaboration with the film-makers. The care that Kwedar, Bentley and even Domingo (all of whom are producers) take to honor and protect these subjects and their stories, and recreate the very collaborative nature they had when creating Breakin’ The Mummy’s Code, is inspiring and deeply felt.
That gentleness can also be inhibitive. The film doesn’t pry. Nor does it take too much dramatic license. Kwedar isn’t making Shawshank to satisfy the demands of an audience. Instead, he’s inviting that audience to be part of something that demands patience and transcends the usual extractive relationship films have with their subjects.
Sing Sing isn’t just telling an uplifting story. The story of its own making is uplifting.