Dart Society Reports

Shakespeare in Prison

text and audio by Mary Wiltenburg
photos and slideshow production by Andy Nelson/The Christian Science Monitor

Leonard Ford is a pedophile. He can say that now. But in 2001, when photographer Andy Nelson and I met him, while reporting a Christian Science Monitor story on the Shakespeare Behind Bars program in his Kentucky prison, Leonard thought he was a victim.

Like all the actors in Luther Luckett Correctional Complex’s production of Titus Andronicus, Leonard had chosen his own part. He was playing Tamora, a vengeful queen who encourages her sons to rape an enemy’s daughter, Lavinia, as the girl begs for mercy. His role had eye-popping parallels to his crimes, which included raping friends’ toddlers. But in his mind, he had more in common with Lavinia – and those who had argued for his stiff sentence were the merciless ones. “Tamora is just like my victims’ parents,” he said.

Still, Leonard was a paradox. Talking about things other than his crimes, he was perceptive and articulate: about what it feels like to be incarcerated, and the struggle to maintain one’s humanity behind bars. I can’t say this for all the inmates I met during those two weeks, but Leonard struck me as a decent guy – or a troubled guy struggling to be a decent one – whose moral imagination had one terrible blind spot.

Over the three years that I returned to Kentucky to interview him, the way Leonard talked about himself and his crimes changed considerably from this first recording. He admitted what he had done, and took responsibility for it, down to the horrifying details. He no longer behaved as though he thought he deserved forgiveness. But he hoped for it.

Mary Wiltenburg

Mary Wiltenburg is an independent print and multimedia reporter based in Baltimore. She has covered human rights issues on four continents, for This American Life, The Christian Science Monitor, and others.

Andy Nelson

Andy Nelson, the R.M. Seaton Professional Journalism Chair at Kansas State University’s A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications, was The Christian Science Monitor’s Washington, D.C.-based staff photographer from 1997 to 2008.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 4:00 pm. It is filed under Cover Features, Spring 2012 Issue and tagged with arts, arts in prison, kentucky, prison, rehabilitation, shakespeare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.