Pioneering the Shakespeare in Prisons Movement
Listen in to a conversation between prison theatre practitioner and activist Jean Trounstine and Mary Irene Ryan Family Executive Artistic Director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame Scott Jackson. Jean’s work at the MCI Framingham Prison for Women in Massachusetts during the 1980’s and 90’s represents perhaps the very first productions of Shakespeare staged by incarcerated women in the modern era. Her program became the focus of her first book, Shakespeare Behind Bars, an in-depth journey into both her experience as facilitator/director of the program and that of the core ensemble of women who explored the works of Shakespeare in the most nontraditional of environments. Jean’s work was to become the early inspiration for the larger Shakespeare in Prisons movement, a global cohort of practitioners that today encompasses programs in more than 30 U.S. states and 17 nations.
Experience the Episode
Wednesday, May 28, 2025 12:00 pm
Listen in to a conversation between prison theatre practitioner and activist Jean Trounstine and Mary Irene Ryan Family Executive Artistic Director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame Scott Jackson. Jean’s work at the MCI Framingham Prison for Women in Massachusetts during the 1980’s and 90’s represents perhaps the very first productions of Shakespeare staged by incarcerated women in the modern era. Her program became the focus of her first book, Shakespeare Behind Bars, an in-depth journey into both her experience as facilitator/director of the program and that of the core ensemble of women who explored the works of Shakespeare in the most nontraditional of environments. Jean’s work was to become the early inspiration for the larger Shakespeare in Prisons movement, a global cohort of practitioners that today encompasses programs in more than 30 U.S. states and 17 nations.
Shakespeare at Notre Dame, the founding organization of the Shakespeare in Prisons Network, is proud to feature the work of this inspirational visionary and, further, to serve as the permanent home of her legacy archive. Our partnership will ensure that her seminal work is accessible to future generations of scholars, researchers, and practitioners in perpetuity.
Meet the Faculty: Scott Jackson
Scott Jackson (he/they) has served as the Mary Irene Ryan Family Executive Artistic Director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame since the position was created in 2007, providing oversight for the many Shakespeare-related programs housed at the University of Notre Dame, with a particular focus on engaging the local community through the works of William Shakespeare.
Previously he served as executive director for the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre (FST) in Fairbanks, Alaska. At FST he produced and performed in outdoor Shakespeare productions staged under the midnight sun at venues throughout Alaska and around the globe (most notably at the VIII World Shakespeare Congress in Brisbane, Australia, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland). From 2000–2003, Scott was the business and legal affairs coordinator for Brighter Pictures, Ltd (now a part of Endemol Shine UK), one of the United Kingdom’s most successful independent television and film production companies.
He holds a dual BA in theatre and history from Indiana University Bloomington, an MFA (distinction) in Actor Training and Coaching from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (University of London), and is a certified Kundalini yoga teacher (CKYT-200) under acclaimed practitioner Maya Fiennes. He has produced, directed, and performed in over 175 theatrical productions.
Scott currently serves as the vice president/president-elect for the Shakespeare Theatre Association, where he also served as treasurer from 2013-2017. He has taught acting process at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, the University of Notre Dame, Holy Cross College, and Indiana University South Bend. Since 2018 he has taught Meisner acting technique and Mindfulness for the Artist for the Prague Shakespeare Company’s Summer Shakespeare Intensive.
A firm believer in the power of Shakespeare and the theatre arts to affect positive social change, he is a co-founder of the Shakespeare in Prisons Network. He teaches a Shakespeare in performance course and leads the kundalini yoga club at the Westville Correctional Facility, Indiana’s largest state prison.
His leadership in the nascent field of Applied Shakespeare has led to an appointment as a Research Associate for the Von Hügel Institute at St. Edmund’s College in the University of Cambridge. Additionally, he has developed an anti-harm approach to actor training called Foundationing, and presented this research at the annual meetings of the European Society of Criminology, the British Shakespeare Association, the Shakespeare Theatre Association, the Shakespeare Association of America, Theatre Communications Group, and the World Shakespeare Congress.
He is the recipient of the Shakespeare Association of America’s Publics Award for the production of the 4th International Shakespeare in Prisons Conference in 2020-21, the Robinson Community Learning Center’s Arthur Quigley, Ph.D. award for community service, and the Fairbanks, Alaska Downtown Association’s Golden Heart award.
Meet the Speaker: Jean Trounstine
Jean Trounstine is a professor, author and activist who worked at Framingham Women’s Prison for a decade, where she directed eight plays for prisoners—resulting in her highly praised book, Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison (St. Martins, 2001). Her groundbreaking work is considered the first prison Shakespeare program launched in the U.S.
She directed adaptations of classic texts behind bars, including Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew (Rapshrew), Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (set in three centuries).
She has written extensively about the criminal legal system in America, including why we should not sentence juveniles to adult prisons in Boy With a Knife: A Story of Murder, Remorse, and a Prisoner’s Fight for Justice (IG, 2016) and Motherlove, short stories about the mothers of teens who’ve killed( Concord Free Press,2024). Sounds like Trouble to Me, her debut prison novel, will be published in May 2026 by Running Wild Publishing.
Trounstine has spoken throughout the world about women in prison, and co-founded the women’s branch of Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL), an innovative alternative sentencing program. In 2018, she was invited to Italy and awarded the Gramsci International Award for Theatre in Prison for her 30 years of work in literature and theatre.
Prisons of our own perceptions
Zip! Zap! Zoom!
About a dozen students at Westville Correctional Facility stand in a circle and trade finger points while saying these words in a competitive game that doubles as a warm-up for an acting class.
Zip! The mood is jovial. Zap! Aaron takes the energy from Shakka and turns to send it to Antwan. Zoom! Anyone who hesitates accepts their loss and steps out of the circle without complaint.
A prison is a setting where any vulnerability can lead to physical attack. Yet the students in Scott Jackson’s Acting Shakespeare class—part of Notre Dame’s collaboration with Holy Cross College at Westville—are willing to follow along with his funky warm-ups and dramatic breathing exercises.
“We’re going to be vulnerable, take the hard focus out of our eyes and be trusting,” says Jackson, the Mary Irene Ryan Family Executive Artistic Director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame. “We’re breathing out from our core, the seat of impulse and instinct.”
To read the full article, please visit Notre Dame Stories.
Editor’s note: The last names of the men at Westville Correctional Facility have been omitted to protect their privacy. This article was written by Brendan O’Shaugnessy with photos by Matt Cashore, and produced by the Office of Public Affairs and Communications.