Christmas, Crime and Punishment

The Door of Many Locks clanged behind me. I began serving the desserts I'd brought to the Christmas party, last year, at a local detention centre for youth. At any one time, about 80 teenagers are held in Burnaby's co-ed youth custody centre for violations from persistent property offences to serious violent crime.

The annual meal is held in the gym, decorated with bits of crepe paper. The wooden tables are cafeteria style, the servers line up behind chafing dishes at the back, buffet-style. Before digging in, the teens rambled onto the improvised stage to sing Christmas carols. Very few knew the lyrics.

After dinner, I wanted to chat with the kids, so I put the remaining desserts on a tray and took them from table to table, hoping to start a conversation. Some kids said no, most ignored me. A boy about 14 sat at the last table with his head downwards. I knelt so my face was level with his and asked, "How about you, a second dessert?" He looked up and I saw a mix of young Elvis and Michelangelo's "Ideal Face."

He replied, "No I won't, but thanks for asking and I want to tell you something about yourself. I've been watching the volunteers tonight and you are the only one who has had a smile for all of us kids. So thank you, and Merry Christmas to you and your family."

I stared at him for what must have been two seconds but seemed like five minutes. The boy, the comment and being locked up made me dizzy. I asked him his name. He told me it was Robert and then bent his head again. The chat was over.

As I walked towards Robert to say goodbye at the end of the evening, he stood up and said something to a girl which made her angry. She threw a plate of food in his face. A guard rushed up and dragged Robert out of the room backwards by both arms. I didn't say goodbye.

I left through security, sat in my car in the dark, recalling what a renowned film director once told me. He said that if he hadn't become a director he might have become a criminal. What sort of a future might Robert have with his anger and pent-up feelings? Did his parents visit? Did the prison have anything like a positive experience to offer a boy like Robert? What had brought him to this place? My wonder shifted to what I might be searching for in my visits to the youth detention centre, what drew me to such a bleak world.

I remembered feeling this way once before.

A night at the theatre

It was September 17, 1991. I walked into Her Majesty's Prison Norwich, U.K. The doors clanged shut, the smell was bleach, the colour was grey and the sound was steel-on-steel with men barking in staccato. An hour later, a young man raised an axe; an old woman screamed and fell dead.

I was there thanks to my oldest friend in London, Nicholas de Jongh, theatre critic for the Guardian. The night before I'd joined him at London's Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, vaguely aware that a German farce called Knickers was on stage as I slouched in an aisle seat. Nicholas was focused and scribbling.

During the interval, I asked what he was reviewing the next evening, as it had to be a damned sight better than Knickers. He replied, "Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, performed by the inmates of a prison in Norwich." I took Nicholas by the lapels and begged him to get me permission to join him.

The next day, we stood on a platform at London's Liverpool Street station, awaiting the 2:30 p.m. to Norwich where prisoner Joe White would play Dostoyevsky's most famous character, Raskolnikov, while held at Her Majesty's Pleasure.

Joe's love of drama began at college where he became so involved in theatre productions that he didn't finish his degree. The handsome 28 year old had been incarcerated for killing a friend while under the influence of LSD eight years earlier. Lifers are regularly moved from one prison to another to discourage lasting friendships, but Joe had still written, directed and performed in 13 plays in four different prisons.

In 1983, the year before his imprisonment, Joe lived in Norwich working as a volunteer at the Maddermarket Theatre and attending workshops. After his incarceration, he continued to educate himself in prison, setting up the Pros and Cons Theatre Company from his cell, making remarkably successful links with actors, playwright and directors. When he was transferred to Her Majesty's Prison Norwich from another penitentiary, he approached the Maddermarket, who put him touch with director John Stokes at the local Sewell Barn Theatre Company. Joe was keen to adapt Crime and Punishment as a play. As Dostoyevsky was John's favourite novelist and the book was one he'd always hoped to transform into a play, the two men set about, after many hassles with the prison authorities, adapting a stage version.

Rehearsal

Crime and Punishment, written by Dostoyevsky in 1886, is about the anguish and dilemma of a poor student in St. Petersburg, the solitary and feverish Raskolnikov, who murders an old pawnbroker for her money to provide for his sister and mother and do good deeds for the poor who deserve them. After the crime his plans go awry. He confesses to a prostitute, Sonya, and finally to a detective, Porfiry, ending up in Siberia with the loving Sonya by his side.

The play needed to be less than two hours; otherwise the wardens would come on stage and escort the cast to their cells whether the performance was over or not. That might have been an explosive end to the evening but meant that many fine scenes had to be cut. It would be acted by seven inmates plus five professional actors and performed in Her Majesty's Prison Norwich.

At the first rehearsal John expected a couple of people from the education department and maybe a warden or two to keep an eye on things. Instead he was ushered into a room with six prisoners and told that someone would come back for him in three hours. His blood pressure soared; he was in a room with three lifers and three other prisoners, clutching a few pages of script hastily written the night before. The prisoners were as apprehensive about John as he was about them.

Everyone formed into the usual actors' reading circle and John said, "OK, let's begin by reading this scene. Jack, can you begin, please?"

Dead silence in the room.

"Jack, can you start reading, please?"

"I am reading."

John said, "Out loud please, Jack."

From then everything was fine. Joe took the men through their lines when John wasn't there, so they were always word perfect by the next rehearsal. "We were treated throughout with exquisite delicacy and consideration by all the prisoners, but we could only ever be tourists in their world," said John.

Joe was devoured by the need to perform in drama; it was as necessary to him as food and drink. The other prisoners didn't seem to mind that he was so much more accomplished than they were. They told John privately, "Joe shouldn't be here. We all think we shouldn't be here, but Joe really shouldn't." He was perfect casting for Raskolnikov. Like the character, Joe was separated from his social group by his exceptional qualities.

A young Scot was chosen to play Porfiry. He was totally inexperienced, but he and Joe worked well together. Sadly he was caught fielding a bottle of whisky that was thrown over the fence one night, and when John came in to rehearse the next day, he was told that the Scot had been instantly shipped out to another prison. Big problem! Performances were a few weeks away, and there was nobody suitable who could be recast. John would have to combine his role as director and prompter with that of Porfiry.

Another prisoner left in a similar manner, and Joe persuaded Jimmy to join the group. Jimmy was recently transferred from Her Majesty's Prison Lincoln, and carefully cultivated a persona as the wing's tough guy. He took a little time to merge into the group's ethos, but caught the prevailing drama fever, and was soon more enthusiastic than anyone and fiercely protective of the Sewell Barn members. One day a couple of guys were making a scene in the courtyard outside the rehearsal window and Jimmy charged across the room, flung the window up and bellowed at them in his heavy Glasgow accent, "Have yous nae respect fer culture? Don't you know we've got thespians up here?" and slammed down the window.

Inhabiting the role

Her Majesty's Prison Norwich is located at the edge of town, built in 1887, the year after Crime and Punishment was written. Aside from the well-kept lawn and the yellow flowers planted and tended by the local gardening society, the late Victorian buildings are a Dickensian nightmare on a cold, wet night.

Nicholas and I arrived early for a scheduled interview with Joe, waiting in the makeshift theatre, a spartan room with 10 rows of wooden chairs. Slim and strong from years of martial arts, dark hair and high cheekbones, Joe walked tall dressed as Raskolnikov in a loose white shirt, dark green vest and black trousers tucked into black boots. He greeted us warmly and, in a soft-spoken voice, told us about the previous evening, when Crime and Punishment's audience had been the prison inmates.

"Although it is nice to perform a play to people who know what you're doing in a knowledgeable way," said Joe, "it's completely different with inmates. They don't know the etiquette, they are always shouting things out, but they are the most passionate audience you will ever get." As he spoke, it was clear that theatre sustained Joe, and gave him the strength and tenacity to keep sane and focused while incarcerated.

Suddenly a prison officer burst in to inform us that no interviews were to take place and frog marched us into the prison waiting room.

Interrupting Nicholas is a bad idea at the best of times. He snapped at the officer. The interview had been pre-arranged and furthermore, he was most disappointed at the lack of refreshments. Clearly the officer was not used to anyone talking back, least of all about the lack of refreshments in prison. She stuttered something about how an interview could be arranged after the performance and skittered away.

We sat alone in the visitors' room reading information posted on the wall about the last prisoner to be hanged on the premises in 1952. A quiet, well-dressed couple was among the first to arrive. I asked a warden who they were: Joe's parents.

They sat front row centre. Nicholas introduced me and I asked Mr. White if he was wearing Old Spice. After a startled look from him, I added, "My dad wore it when I was a child and it brings back lovely memories to smell it again." His expression softened, he smiled and confirmed that it was Old Spice. Nicholas and I sat behind the Whites, the lights dimmed and Raskolnikov appeared between the two dark, silhouetted heads of Joe's parents.

Joe was electric as Raskolnikov and on stage every minute. The poor student, full of disgust with himself, the state of Russian poverty and the power of the rich, faced his audience and spewed out self-loathing with, "I should like to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, whether you want to listen or not, why I've never been able to become even an insect...." He soon murders the pawnbroker, a weedy cockroach of a character. His trip to hell begins.

Drop of the curtain

I went to the ladies' room at intermission. Like the rest of the prison, it was concrete and steel, reeking of bleach. At the end of the sinks stood a small table covered in soft white flannel with baby animals printed in pastel colours. An oasis of four square feet of softness stood in this 19th century behemoth of brick. I ran one finger across the fabric, imagining little baby bums on the flannel and soft baby legs in the air waiting for clean nappies to visit their fathers.

Raskolnikov continued his life of paranoia and anger, taunting the detective, lashing out at friends and befriending Sonya and her pathetic family. He physically separated himself from the other characters clumped together on stage to emphasize his isolation.

Joe proved to be the perfect Raskolnikov. He inhabited the part rather than played it, entering Raskolnikov's skin, every nuance, physical and vocal, every gesture and wary silence. Joe managed a terribly difficult feat: to keep the audience on his side through his agonized attempts to rationalize a rootless world where injustice is endemic, and to "cure" it by committing a terrible and savage crime. He led them through his agonized attempts to justify his crime to himself and his final decision to accept suffering and punishment. John said, "I never felt a negative judgement from an audience and I can only put that down to Joe's fierce honesty and his innate air of 'goodness.'"

The play ended, I was too stunned to move. Mrs. White wiped tears from her eyes, looking downwards. Her beloved boy, after a stunning performance, would now go back to his cell for lock-up. The audience had 45 minutes to talk to the cast who were elated with their success. The Scots cast member, Jimmy asked me,

"Are ye a Yank?"

I said, "No, I'm a Canadian living in New York."

"Are ye fae B.C.?"

I said, "Yes, how did you know?"

He answered, "Ah didnae. But ah hoped ye were. When ah was a merchant seaman, ah went tae Victoria and saw a sunset so bonnie that I thought, 'One day, I'll take me mah there and show her a Victoria sunset.'"

Another prisoner, almost levitating with the success of his performance, asked with a wink if I'd like to come upstairs to the cells. I said I didn't think it would be allowed and he replied, "Ach, the guys would love ta meet ya!" mocking an exaggerated disappointment that I wasn't coming upstairs.

Nicholas got his interview with Joe, during the back-slapping and elation of everyone else. I walked towards Joe to say goodbye but a buzzer rang, we were ushered out immediately, the prison doors were closed and that was that. They'd bent their heads downwards. The chat was over. The curtain hadn't gone down on the play; it went down on the whole prison.

We arranged a posse to go to the local pub, The Windmill: Mr. and Mrs. White, John Stokes and his wife Elizabeth who played Sonya's mother, Michelle (surname withheld by request) who played Sonya and Phil, Joe's prison officer. The warmth and jolliness of the pub was an inviting welcome.

After we all enjoyed a few pints of Guinness and praised the play, Mrs. White gently tugged at her skirt, making sure it covered her knees. In a quiet voice she asked Michelle how she'd felt acting opposite her son who had committed murder.

Michelle kept her eyes down and quietly explained that when she was 14, her brother had killed someone while hallucinating on drugs and went to prison. For nine years, she had no contact with him. When John asked her to participate in Crime and Punishment, she was hesitant to act with inmates, but agreed. She got to know the men, formed a close friendship with Joe and trusted him without question. This prompted her to visit her brother in prison for the first time in an effort to regain their brother/sister relationship. For the last few sentences of the story, Michelle's voice was almost inaudible. After a pause, she looked up at Mrs. White. Their eyes flooded.

Phil stood up, cleared his throat and said he had to go home to walk his dogs. Mr. and Mrs. White bade us a heartfelt goodnight, Michelle excused her and left. John, Elizabeth, Nicholas and I headed to dinner. I corresponded with Joe for several years, but lost touch.

'Tis the season

Recently, for reasons not completely clear to me, I wanted to revisit that evening and to know more about what made it possible. I tracked down and conversed with John Stokes and others involved back then in the staging of Crime and Punishment, who provided me some of the background I've included here. I also found Joe White, reaching him by phone at his home. Gracious and soft-spoken, he preferred not to reminisce. I can only say, happily, that he is now living in an English town with his wife and children. All those years ago I went to a grim institution to look in on others' lives, safe in my world of friends, family and a job. I discovered the astonishing transformative power of art. Joe White's performance as Raskolnikov showed me how, in slipping into the skin of another, liberation of sorts could be truly experienced.

Last week I went back to the youth detention centre with smiles, a few compliments and praise for the kids who sang. Robert was gone and in his place sat an indigenous teenager with several long scars of knife slits across his throat. I didn't presume to be there to bring about transformation of any sort in these young peoples' lives. But I brought dessert and memories of an evening of theatre in a cold, grey prison that changed my perceptions of crime and punishment.