Reentry Through the Arts

Found Suitable

Funded by California Humanities Foundation (2017-2018)

The Project

Lifer: Stories from the Inside/Out

Found Suitable

In partnership with The Francisco Homes, TheatreWorkers Project artists Susan Franklin Tanner and Jim Macdonald conducted writing and theatre workshops for a group of men who are on parole from serving life sentences.

The workshops gave the participants an opportunity to examine, express, and redefine their life stories through a creative process. Found Suitable was performed as an informal staged reading.

Edited by Bonnie Banfield and Doris Baizley based the participants’ writing

Playwright

Jim Macdonald

Director

Susan Franklin Tanner

Eight residents of The Francisco Homes

Participants

Rubén Guevara

Professional Actor(s)

Nicole Keating, Documentarian

Other Participant(s)

PERFORMANCES

Venue(s)

Various including Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA and Loyola Marymount University

"This project demonstrated the power of storytelling as both a healing and theatrical mechanism. By transforming the men’s stories, poetry and prose into a piece of theatre that was performed by them for diverse audiences, TWP was able to (as we have done with unemployed steelworkers, shipbuilders and meatpackers), give meaningful opportunities to those who seldom have a voice to he heard and for their humanity to be seen. This project illuminated the “person” who has been defined by the crime he committed instead of by who he actually is."

— Susan Franklin Tanner
TWP Founder/Director

MEDIA

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