Kate Mulgrew isn't really an inmate, but she plays one on Netflix.
The "Orange Is the New Black" star is also an alumna of Stella Adler Studios, and the acting program that trained her is providing the same service to inmates at Rikers Island, AMNY reports.
The program, which celebrates its first year in place at the prison in August, started out in the women's facility, but has since expanded to the men's facility. Stella Adler actors and writers have provided classes in acting, movement, voice, speech and dance to three hundred inmates and counting.
It took upwards of two years to get the program in place, the Studio's artistic director Tom Oppenheim told AMNY in a profile of the program, but he says that since then they've received enormous support from Department of Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte.
Mulgrew, who is on the board of directors of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, has seen some performances from inmates in the program.
"It's a program of hope," Mulgrew said to AMNY. "It's very true, at least in my experience in life, that the young people who are often thwarted by their circumstances are often liberated by their own imagination. They have only to discover that. So often these kids do not understand that their creative energy is a tool they can use to their creative advantage."
The benefits of both vocational prison education programs and prison education programs in the liberal arts and humanities are widely documented, but resources for programs like the Stella Adler Studios program at Rikers are hard to secure. Proceeds from Stella Adler's annual gala this past May are currently funding the program, as well as other Stella Adler Studio initiatives at Phoenix House drug addiction recover center and at East River Academy, the educational program for 16-21 year old Rikers inmates.
In season three of "Orange Is the New Black" Counselor Healy has not been a fan of drama classes for the inmates at Litchfield. What would those Christmas Pageant auditions have looked like if Crazy Eyes, Big Boo, Taystee and Morello and been studying Adler's technique?
