About 30 people stood silently as a haunting noise, much like a prison chain gang at work on a railroad line, filled the air.
Moments later, several people ran across the room, their arms flailing as if they’re unsure where they should go.
About a minute later, everything stopped.
The action was part of a rehearsal for a unique collaboration involving a racially diverse group of about three dozen students and faculty at Morehouse and Spelman colleges and the University of Georgia. The students and faculty hope the performance about Georgia’s treatment of prisoners will spark a conversation with audience members about incarceration, the role of race in sentencing and prison labor — past and present — through dance and dramatic performance.
Their work, “By Our Hands,” premieres Friday evening at the UGA Theatre, with three additional free performances in Athens later this month. Four performances are scheduled at Spelman in February.
“The production does a good job of not necessarily saying what has to happen, but giving a good perspective on all these stories,” said Cydney Seigerman, 28, a third-year UGA graduate student.
Others say it’s encouraged them to get more involved in prison reform.
“I didn’t think of prison reform the way I do now, and I am so for it,” said Cymiah Alexander, 18, a first-year Spelman student.
The Georgia Incarceration Performance Project, as it is called, used archived records, artifacts housed at UGA and interviews with incarcerated students enrolled in courses through Common Good Atlanta to create the production. The idea came more than a year ago from a UGA collection called “The New South and New Slavery: Convict Labor in Georgia” that focused on prison labor after slavery, during Reconstruction and through the end of the chain gang era. The collection included shackles and whipping reports.
UGA and Spelman faculty talked about how they could use the material from the collection to tell its story. About two dozen students from the three schools are the main performers. Other students have helped write parts of the script, through their own study of the collection.
Translating archived papers to a script presented several challenges.
“How can we bring emotion to the history of the archives?” asked Julie B. Johnson, a senior lecturer at Spelman who is one of the directors of the performance.
In recent years, one of the few areas where lawmakers from both major political parties have agreed on changes has involved the prison system. In Georgia, state leaders have increased funding for accountability courts to find alternatives to prison for some nonviolent drug offenders. The Trump administration has embraced similar efforts through the First Step Act. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has pushed an ongoing effort to close the city's jail and find other uses for the building, as part of the city's criminal justice reform plan.
One approach to prison reform has been to educate the incarcerated. A Ken Burns-produced documentary on a New York program where some inmates have earned college degrees from faculty at Bard College is set to premiere later this month. A group of UGA students tutors Athens-area inmates seeking their GEDs.
The UGA students made several trips to Spelman for rehearsals. The eyes of UGA student Brett Green, who is African American, widened excitedly as he talked about the “black excellence” he has seen at Spelman and Morehouse, the academically acclaimed historically black colleges.
The students say they’ve built friendships and learned more about themselves. Each student had to display a skill they had at the outset of rehearsals. Many learned additional skills through devised theater, the improvisational method the team used to create the performance.
The material in the Georgia performance is intense. Students felt the shackles worn by chain gang members. There have been tears at some rehearsals, students said.
“It’s physically and emotionally heavy,” said Johnson.
“It’s a lot to think about,” said Nosayaba Okungbowa, 20, a fourth-year UGA student.
Throughout the rehearsals, the students repeatedly ask themselves questions such as what has incarcerated labor done to themselves, the state, the nation. For Green, it's a reminder of the discussion at UGA about how slavery helped the university. UGA is seeking faculty proposals to research that history.
The students have some opportunities to release. They gathered in a circle after a break from a Saturday rehearsal and did some improv. Robert Rucker, 22, a Morehouse senior, pretended he was about to give birth.
“I can’t breathe,” Rucker exclaimed to laughter from the group.
The energy in the room was up. It was now time to work. Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin, assistant professor in UGA’s Department of Theater and Film Studies along with its Institute for African American Studies, gave instructions for the next scene.
“Get it?” she asked.
“Got it,” the students replied.
“Good,” she said.
Alexander began the performance during a recent rehearsal. She swayed slowly around several performers who stretched their hands to the sky, reaching for the archives.
“We are engaging in a deeper examination of truth,” Alexander said as Kootin directed her steps.
Alexander stared at the imaginary audience, urging them to have an open mind.
“The journey is not linear,” she said. “There is no end.”
Prison labor in Georgia dates back more than a century. Archived photos show men in black and white striped jumpsuits, doing work such as building railroad tracks or other state construction projects. Books such as “I Am a Fugitive From a Georgia Chain Gang!” and “Georgia (Expletive)” written in the early part of the 20th century shared accounts of brutal working conditions.
Today, about 5,000 offenders work on prison farms or in preserving, preparing and serving foods, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections. Another 1,400 offenders receive on-the-job training in areas such as metal fabrication, woodworking, upholstery and license plates.
Students say they’ve had discussions with classmates and others who see long sentences and prison labor as appropriate punishment for criminal convictions.
“Why does that concern you? It is what it is. They shouldn’t have done it,” Green, 19, a second-year UGA student from Augusta, has heard.
Green has a different perspective. He and Okungbowa talk about the “black codes,” laws passed after slavery. They cite cases they read in the archives where African Americans were put in prison for loitering or whistling too loud. A 12-year-old, they said, was the youngest inmate.
“Slavery was indeed still there, but it went by a different name. It’s just insane it was allowed to go on for that long,” Green said.
“And the effects are still seen today,” Okungbowa continued.
The students are eager to share what they have learned.
“I just think of all the people whose stories are not told and … want people to come out and see it,” she said.
EVENT PREVIEW
“By Our Hands”
The production is part of UGA’s Spotlight on the Arts Festival.
8 p.m. Nov. 8 and Nov. 16; 2:30 p.m. Nov. 10 and Nov. 17. Free. University of Georgia's Fine Arts Building, 255 Baldwin St., Athens. drama.uga.edu.
“College Behind Bars”
A four-part documentary on one particular effort of inmates to earn college degrees will premiere later this month on PBS.
“College Behind Bars” shows faculty members at Bard College, a private, liberal arts school in upstate New York, teaching inmates at several prisons under a program called the Bard Prison Initiative. Ken Burns, the award-winning filmmaker behind documentaries on the Civil War, baseball and other topics, is the executive producer.
Director Lynn Novick, producer Sarah Botstein and graduates Wesley Caines and Dyjuan Tatro recently visited Atlanta for a screening and met with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to discuss the documentary and the initiative.
Novick said the documentary gave her a new perspective for the importance of a college education.
Social justice and incarceration are issues being increasingly discussed among college students, the filmmakers said.
“This is a hugely important topic on college campuses,” Novick said.
A group of Bard students started the initiative in 1999 in response to a decline in government funding for college education prison programs. It currently has about 300 students and awarded more than 550 degrees. Bard faculty teach inside the prisons the same curriculum being learned by undergraduate students.
“I want everyone to have a discussion around what have we made our criminal spaces, our prisons, look like,” said Caines, 53, a former inmate who is one of the initiative’s first graduates and now works at Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit organization that helps accused offenders. “The deeper question is how do we value liberal arts education in our society and this is a vehicle for that.”
The documentary began after Botstein and Novick gave a guest lecture inside the prison in 2012 to discuss a Burns documentary on Prohibition. The filmmakers were fascinated by the program and talked about how they would make a documentary. It took about two years to get permission from New York prison officials to film, Botstein recalled.
The college raises money to fund the program. The filmmakers visited the prisons more than 100 times and shot about 400 hours of film for the four-hour documentary. The inmates talked out their concerns about the film. They did not want a film showing stereotypical images of inmates.
“This film had the potential to tell a different type of story about us,” said Tatro, 33, who completed his degree after leaving prison and is now government affairs associate for the initiative.
Tatro talked about what the initiative does for students.
“It allows us to reimagine ourselves.”
TELEVISION PREVIEW
“College Behind Bars”
9 p.m. Nov. 25 PBS
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