In “Sing Sing,” a movie that has opened in New York cinemas to universal critical acclaim and goes nationwide next week, Colman Domingo portrays an inmate at Sing Sing named John “Divine G” Whitfield, who helps found a theater program in the prison called Rehabilitation Through the Arts, or RTA. He recruits into the program another inmate, Divine Eye, portrayed by Clarence Maclin. The new cast member is aggressively resistant at first, at one point yelling and threatening the other actor-inmates during rehearsal — until an older inmate (portrayed by Sean “Dino” Johnson) stops him with a look, and says gravely: “We’re here to become human again. We get to put on nice clothes, and dance, and enjoy the things that are not in our reality.”

Maclin is playing a fictionalized version of himself; he was incarcerated in Sing Sing for armed robbery. He went back there to perform in the film: “When I did a scene in a cell by myself, the cell upstairs over me, I was in that cell” as an inmate. “So the apprehension was real. It was something that we could feel. But the purpose was bigger than us.” Maclin, Johnson and other performers in the film are graduates of RTA, an actual theater program begun in Sing Sing Correctional Facility in 1996. “RTA is beyond therapeutic,” Johnson has said. ” RTA is life changing.…I found freedom behind the wall… For years in Sing Sing, a lot of young men have been taking advantage of RTA, and it’s been transforming.”

RTA has spread to eight prisons in New York State. Most recently, inmates put on a production of Keenan Scott II’s 2021 Broadway play “Thoughts of a Colored Man” at Green Haven Correctional Facility. That’s the prison where Greg Kwedar volunteered as a teaching artist — and was so impressed with the experience that he wrote, directed and produced “Sing Sing.”

(Leslie Lichter and Charles Moore, RTA’s executive director and director of programs and operations, will speak via Zoom on August 2 on Prison Breakthroughs: How Art Can Transform Lives)

When the inmates were putting on a production of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”, I interviewed Kate Powers, a theater professional who was directing it. An excerpt of her still-illuminating answers:

The inmates have performed in plays by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Suzan-Lori Parks, August Wilson and Stephen Sondheim. Would there be anything off-limits?

The men have done Of Mice and Men, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Macbeth, West Side Story and plays they’ve written themselves. We look for plays that have a message for the population. Superior Donuts talked about a cross-racial, cross-generational friendship, and about the idea that change is possible, for instance. If a play is just bleak or lacks any kind of message about human nature or human behavior, the guys would probably pass on it.

There are some famous stories of theater turning around the lives of the imprisoned – Charles S. Dutton and Jean Genet probably the most famous examples. What effect has theater had on the men who have participated at Sing Sing?

Our program is not about turning the men into actors, but about using theater to build listening skills, critical thinking skills, tolerance for multiple points of view, conflict resolution tools, trust, community. I’ve taught workshops in acting, directing, Shakespeare, clowning and physical comedy at Sing Sing. It turns out that theater can do exactly what we all hope it can do; it changes lives.

How has it affected the theater professionals who do the teaching and directing?

It’s thrilling to see theater actually changing lives, sometimes in the course of a single work session, but particularly over a year or two, as a man starts to discover trust or learns that there are times when it is safe to let down his guard. I have one gentleman in the program who asked me, two years ago, to help him learn to laugh. He grew up in a very strict home, and laughter was not allowed. He didn’t know how to do it. But just last night, during our warm-up, he was fooling around and laughing easily.

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Powers is still working with RTA, and has this reaction to the movie: “I love that there are so many returned citizens and alum of the program in the film, that the film modeled pay equity for the team, that more people are hearing about the work that we do. I am thrilled for Divine G., Clarence, and Dino, particularly, because I worked closely with all three of them. May people be moved to support the work, which is always balanced on a budgetary knife’s edge.”