Artwork by Amanda DeBlauwe, I Mail My Love to You, 2020
With Love from Inside is a theater presentation that includes 11 vignettes compiled from folks inside prison. Theater students and I put it together. It’s a medium to get a message across, which is the need for Second Look legislation.
The play focuses on the narrative of a young man who is outside prison while his mother is inside, serving a long, indeterminate sentence. They’re looking for and hoping for Second Look legislation to pass. Throughout the play, you hear more about both their struggles as well as her talents as a musician and poet. He shares some of her work.
It’s a narrative of them waiting for Second Look legislation to pass and how it finally passes. The glue is this is a production that’s completely compiled of folks who are inside, currently and formerly. They wrote it and put it together. We’re casting it and staging it in the way we believe it should be done.
Some of the cast and crew of With Love, From Inside
The play gets across the message about people who’ve “served their time.” That’s not necessarily a number of years, but it’s the change. You look for the experience of change, of someone being different than they were. Someone who sees, believes and behaves differently.
That’s the so-called “goal” of incarceration -- rehabilitation. And that may not take 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 years. We shouldn’t have folks waiting for these arbitrary numbers before someone has the chance to see they’re actually a different person than the one who made that one mistake that they’re now judged for over the rest of their lives.
The message I want to get across is this legislation would allow folks to actually have a chance. In particular, I focus on the fact that there are lots of women serving long and indeterminate sentences for intimate partner violence. And yet there’s no avenue for them to get out.
Everyone knows they shouldn’t be in there. Second Look legislation is an avenue that would allow them to get the relief they need -- that they should have had long ago.
I’m feeling good about the play and that we really have a chance to get that message. We have a talkback at the end where we tell the audience more about Second Look legislation – what it is, how they can support it. I’m very happy about the spaces we’re getting the play into, places we wouldn’t normally be in. Come check it out!
Note: With Love, From Inside will soon be available online. Click to learn more about the play or read the script. Here are some upcoming performances:
May 5: Detroit Public Theatre, 6 PM
May 10: PIX Theatre in Lapeer, 7:30 PM
May 11: Wayne State in Detroit, time TBD
May 19: Historic Howell Theater in Howell, 3 PM
May 30 & 31: Matrix Theatre in Detroit, time TBD
Cozine Welch of AFSC is a guitar player, songwriter and poet.