The Skylight Theatre Company has again shown creativity, competence, and respect for the artist in its latest production, PRISON BOXING. Author/actress Leah Joki has crafted an absorbing and intense play describing her 18 years as a teacher in Arts in Corrections, a program offering California State prison inmates the opportunity to open their minds and hearts to an emotional life which they may never before have experienced. Ms. Joki is the only actor in the play but performs multiple roles within today’s California prison system – from amusing to painful to evil.
With consummate skill, the Montana-born and bred narrator traces her personal and professional development through high school, college, Juilliard, soap operas, and finally to her special room in prison. But most compelling are her mini-lives as the heroin-addicted criminal trying to be a good inmate, the “cool” inmate who has never looked into himself, the child molester who can’t understand why his loving behaviors have landed him in prison, the crushed victim’s family, the abused woman’s rebellion, and a host of other snapshots of life within prison walls. Not to be neglected are brief roles for the sun-glassed corrections officers standing by with folded arms typically closed off from feelings who cannot seem to understand the point of inmates delving into their thoughts, motivations, attitudes, and aspirations. She sees payday and ways to increase pay as their major motivators.
The set is stark and defined only by the outlines of nine cubes on the floor and a blank wall behind Ms. Joki, which sometimes hosts scenes from her memory. The play begins as Ms. Joki enters the multiple automatically locking prison gates to begin her journey – and ours – into the confines of an empty life in which each individual remains locked inside prison walls – while also locked alone in his own body and mind. She forges ahead with her goal of opening up previously shut down parts of prisoner’s dreams – all the while compartmentalizing her own thoughts, feelings, and hopes for the future. The shutting off of one part of herself from another, as well as the inmates’ shutting off parts of themselves, is aptly mirrored in the nine cubes on the floor.
Although Ms. Joki sometimes expresses her own thoughts about the politics of prison and the economic realities of prison programs, the true focus of the play is on the complex and fascinating personality sketches she draws. This is a tiny play about a huge problem known as incarceration – and one woman’s efforts to create a change, one inmate at a time. It is an enjoyable moment in theater – but also a thought-provoking experience, which may last long after the play is over.
(Photos of Leah Joki by Terry Cyr)
Written and performed by Leah Joki, and Directed by Linda Grinde
Lighting Design by Derrick McDaniel and Sound Design by Christopher Moscatiello
5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays through April 26, 2015 at the Skylight Theatre SkyLab
1816 ½ North Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Tickets: $25. For reservations, call 213-761-7061 or online at http://skylighttix.com
Published on Apr 02, 2015