The Uses Of Joy - The Austin Chronicle

The women Conspire serves seem to know it, too. Craft describes an exercise she once tried “where women create a character who could be in the class with them, and then they discuss, basically, how she got to jail, what happened to her. And we made it about two days through that workshop, and on day three, the women all came in and said: ‘We have to talk to you.’”

Michelle Dahlenburg, Conspire’s associate director, interjects: “‘We’ve had a meeting.’”

Craft nods: “‘We’ve had a meeting, and we’re not doing this. This isn’t what this class is about. We know why we’re here, we know what we’ve done, we know all the shit that we have to deal with. This class is for reaching beyond.’”

It’s hard not to be all this article is AMAZING when it features so many very nice things written about your wife, but Kathy Catmull’s piece in the Austin Chronicle today about Conspire Theater is really pretty great. I really like how she acknowledges her preconceptions of what theater work in a jail setting would be like (everybody has those preconceptions) but that she doesn’t cast the work through that prism. She does a really fantastic job of capturing the way Kat works and the way that she views the work in ways that are not really easy: I live with the woman and did not really understand them for a long time, and so I am very happy to see her portrayed so accurately.

Lots of people (and I’ve been one of them, I’m sure) have told Kat what she should be doing, or this awesome idea they had for her, or what she should try to do with the women in the jail to fix them — it’s really exciting to read such a long and thoughtful piece about her work that really expresses why you can’t just go in and try to fix people, and how the work that she does instead is probably more important, anyway. Give it a read, will you?

6 months ago | 6 notes | Reblog | | Comments
conspire theater, kat, austin chronicle,

The women can surprise me with how they talk about themselves. I’ve never heard anyone say, “I’m an inmate,” or “I’m an incarcerated woman.” There are self-identified hippies, hustlers, writers, musicians, teachers and most of all, mothers. Most of the women in my classes for the past 2 years have been mothers, and that identity seems the most important to many. Whatever else has gone on in their lives, many women speak longingly of their children. For several months in 2010, my class was full of gay women who proudly declared their sexualities in group games and exercises.

Since the officers at the jail only address the women by their last names, keeping their first names and nicknames intact also seems important. Being incarcerated takes away women’s identities in many ways, so women find ways to assert themselves. I try to let my classroom be a space where women can explore these identities without retribution, although we all know that sometimes what we uncover in there can’t leave the room. That’s one of our class agreements: “No using anything that happens in class against anyone else later on.”

For all the stories I’ve heard and women I’ve met, I’ve never met a woman who calls herself a prisoner.

Kat has a guest post at Tiger Beatdown today, writing about incarcerated women, personal agency, and the “are they victims or perpetrators” dilemma that people who work with people who are in the criminal justice system often encounter.

9 months ago | 1 note | Reblog | | Comments
tiger beatdown, criminal justice, feminism, conspire theater,

I spent my entire pregnancy in county by choice. The district attorney had gone as low as they were going to go with an offer of 4 years and I had come to terms with that but I had spoken to other women and heard their experience with going to the big girl prison pregnant. They would go to a medical unit and have the baby and if they were lucky they would get to spend an hour or two with the baby. If no one showed up within a specified time frame of a couple of days to pick up the baby then it would go to the State. I knew that if I put off my sentencing until after the baby was born that I would get to spend two to three days in the same room with my baby, and I wanted that opportunity.

Lauren Johnson writes about the experience of being pregnant, and giving birth, while incarcerated, over at the Conspire Theatre blog.

I won’t go into the whole fundraising pitch again, but helping women find a way to tell these sorts of stories is exactly what Conspire does, and they are halfway through their first IndieGoGo fundraising campaign. Can you help?

9 months ago | 0 notes | Reblog | | Comments
conspire theater, criminal justice, pregnancy, gender,

While vaguely on the subject of Kat’s work with incarcerated women, now seems like an excellent opportunity to point y’all to Conspire Theatre’s IndieGoGo campaign.

Conspire Theater is a very small non-profit organization that Kat — she’s my wife, y’all — started about two years ago, because she wanted to work in jails with women, and there weren’t any organizations in Central Texas doing what she wanted to do. So she started her own. She’s been running workshops with the women in the minimum security wing Travis County Correctional Complex every Friday morning for a long time, because her job (at another area non-profit) values the work she does enough to give her a morning a week off to head off to the jail. She’s also traveled to Gatesville Prison and Lockhart Women’s Prison for occasional one-off workshops. But it’s not really enough.

To that end, she’s started an IndieGoGo fundraising campaign to raise money to start a second project with the women incarcerated in Maximum Security. Most of those women are in for much longer sentences than the women she works with now, and will really benefit from regular programming. The video up there explains why theater classes are so effective in addressing the needs of incarcerated women.

So, I’ll tell you a few secrets about non-profit fundraising real quick. The goal for the campaign is $3,000, which may not seem like a lot of money in terms of paying stipends for multiple people, buying supplies, and training new facilitators. But a big part of how these things work is that bigger funders, foundations, and grant administrators are mostly interested in supporting organizations that have a proven ability to raise money — it allows them to see their grant as an investment, because it’s going to something sustainable. So raising $3,000 independently via an Internet fundraising campaign is really significant — the money raised right now is likely to transform into more funding down the line.

Another important aspect of this particular fundraiser is that every donation counts not just because, like, $5 paypal’d over brings it $5 closer to the $3,000 goal — though that is obviously true — but because when applying for future funds, it is a huge benefit to be able to demonstrate a broad base of community support. Saying, “We raised $3,000 from two people” means “My rich parents paid for this.” Saying “We raised $3,000 in small donations from a hundred different people” says “People from all over really believe in and support what we’re doing.” The latter is much more valuable.

I have learned so much about the circumstances surrounding women in jails and prisons from Kat, and ensuring that these women aren’t thrown away and forgotten is absolutely vital. It’s a poverty issue, a civil rights issue, a feminist issue, a social justice issue, and — ultimately — a compassion issue. I’m so proud of the work that Kat is doing with the women she serves, and I really want her to be able to spend as much time doing it as possible. That takes money, so I am asking — will you contribute?

9 months ago | 6 notes | Reblog | | Comments
conspire theater,

The Battles Of G-Baby →

I have a story in the new issue of the Texas Observer. It’s the first in the magazine’s new monthly format, which is exciting — previously, the magazine ran bi-weekly, so this one will be on stands for twice as long.

The story is about Whitney Perkins, who raps under the name G-Baby. I first met Whitney when I was sitting in on a performance/sharing at Travis County Correctional Complex — Kat teaches theater classes to women incarcerated there, and she invited me to see their end-of-term project. Whitney was definitely the most charismatic performer that day, but I was still very surprised to see her retire a 5-time champion on 106 & Park’s Freestyle Friday a few months later.

The article is about battle rap, and sexism and homophobia in hip hop, and Whitney’s completely indomitable spirit. I’m pretty proud of how this one came out — give it a read, will you?

9 months ago | 16 notes | Reblog | | Comments
g-baby, texas observer, whitney perkins, writing elsewhere, rap, hip hop, homophobia, misogyny, conspire theater,