Slaying Shakespeare

Learning to Adapt

Past inmate Jeff Morarend had a tougher time relating to his character. In his first performance, Morarend was cast as the female role of Goneril in King Lear. He found it difficult to channel a woman’s mindset into his performance, attributing it to his parents’ early childhood separation and the lack of strong female role models while living apart from his mother and sisters. Even so, Morarend was up for a challenge.

He memorized more than 200 lines with ease and when it came time to perform for his family, he was eager to show them he possessed the work ethic and skill set needed to pull off the character.

“I made a mess of things, and I guess I was hopeful it would be something that my family might be proud of,” Morarend says.

Wearing a black dress, necklace and do-rag to cover his hair, Morarend commanded attention on the makeshift stage and was praised by a Green Bay women’s Shakespeare group for presenting one of the best Goneril portrayals they had seen.

Morarend’s second chance to display his hard work and dedication came when he was cast as Cassio, the general’s lieutenant in Othello. In the play, the character of Iago uses Cassio in his scheme to destroy Othello. The plot thickens as Iago plans Cassio’s assassination, ultimately stabbing him in the leg from behind. Though Toys R’ Us swords had been overruled as too close to real weapons, both Shailor and the cast used creative ways to accurately display the scene. Shailor brought in a professional fight director to train participants in stage combat and used an alternative sword prop.

With a martial arts practice weapon in hand, Morarend’s fellow inmate came after him in swift, choreographed steps. The harmlessness of the bendable PVC pipe covered in black foam rubber was successfully disguised as Morarend hunched over with a raw portrayal of pain upon his face.

“If you really get a grip of the fear and all the negative feelings that go along with what a victim is experiencing due to your crime and your actions toward them, boy that can take you a long way,” Morarend says.

He had worked at connecting with his character by relating it to his own life experiences. And though he had made mistakes, he was hopeful for the same forgiveness his character received.

At the end of the play, Othello apologizes to Cassio for remaining blind to Iago’s trickery, and Cassio is appointed general of the island.

“In his character, I saw failure and weakness, but there was also redemption,” Morarend says. “I guess my hope was that I could not just be that character, but have that in my own life as well.”

An Unlikely Brotherhood

Both Leair and Morarend attribute their success to the camaraderie established among the group.

“What they find is that they’re a team, and they develop trust in each other, and they learn how to work with each other,” Shailor says.

Each year, the program involved 15 to 17 men of different races, sexual orientations and criminal histories, ranging from drug charges and robberies to sexual assaults and homicides.

“It helped in relation to when I did actually get released, trying to cope with different people in society that may be from different walks of life,” Leair says. “I don’t think I was fully prepared for that, so the Shakespeare project definitely helped in allowing me to pick up some skills of interaction in a social setting that really are absent inside the prison walls.”

At the start of their twice-a-week practices, Shailor would round up the group in a “circle of trust,” where they would share thoughts, questions and concerns. Yet these developing relationships extended far beyond a simple circle of chairs within a prison classroom. Despite discrimination and teasing, inmates would rehearse in the yard together. Certain lines—such as “some villain hath done me wrong”—drew laughter among the inmates. And sure enough, by the end of the nine-month process, the cast had become a brotherhood.

And to this day, these social skills have proved important. Since his early release, Leair has never stopped applying what he learned under Shailor’s coaching and direction. He sees a direct relationship between his developing communication skills and his current job in sales.

“It’s a genuineness I like to carry in my job, having to build up a rapport and a trust with potential clients in the business world,” Leair says. “It’s the ever on-going journey of trying to be more self-aware and just strengthen yourself as an individual.”

Morarend also continues to carry lessons from The Shakespeare Prison Project close to his heart, evidenced when he read a Shakespearean sonnet to his fiancé during a public presentation at UW-Parkside. Despite the sense of powerlessness that evolved during his eight years in prison, he has worked to build his life from where he left off. He has both reconciled with his family and continues to be a successful plumber, a career he started before he served time in prison. Leair also values the project’s ability to bring loved ones together.

“I guess to be able to be in that situation and to be fortunate and lucky enough to have the support that I’ve had and to be able to do something I think as positive as the project,” says Leair. “I can’t say enough good things about it and the positive impact it’s had on me and my family.”