How the Cast of ‘Sing Sing’ Broke Free From Prison to the Big Screen

I grew up in BROOKLYN, N.Y. — John “Divine G” Whitfield was a natural actor. As a Bruce Lee-obsessed teenager, he and a friend made karate movies, charging 10 cents to watch the action-packed films. He enjoyed watching the local TV show Disco Soap Factory In the 1970s, he attended a performing arts high school. He sang, DJed, and performed acrobatics. So when Whitfield was imprisoned for a murder he didn’t commit in the late 1980s, he intuitively turned to the arts for emotional release. In 1996, he became a founding member of Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a theater troupe inside the Sing Sing maximum-security correctional facility 40 miles north of New York City.

“Once you get into the creative element, it’s like you become addicted to it,” says Whitfield, 60. Rolling Stone. “It's a soothing, calming escape from all the pain, suffering and despair. Prisons are brutal, especially when there are people you don't know well.” [in] New York, they have a very strict system, very “These are tough times. So these moments of escape save lives.”

Whitfield and RTA are the beating heart of Rich Rich (Released nationwide on August 2), which explores how a prison theater program has spiritually liberated incarcerated people from their sentences, even if only for a moment, and has helped many rediscover their humanity. The RTA program has had such a powerful impact that the recidivism rate for those who have been part of the program is less than three percent. (By contrast, nationwide, 62 percent of people return to prison within three years of release, according to a report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.) Colman Domingo plays Whitfield’s Divine G, but with the exception of co-stars Paul Raci (Metal sound) and Sean San Jose, the majority of the cast — more than 85 percent — is made up of formerly incarcerated men, many of whom are graduates of the RTA program.

Directed by Greg Koeder, the film follows an imprisoned theater troupe as they prepare for their next production: a time-traveling musical comedy called crack the mummy code, Written and directed by real-life RTA instructor Brent Boyle, a wild tale featuring an Egyptian prince, Western outlaws, deep-sea pirates, and Hamlet, the show premiered at Sing Sing in 2005. Throughout the film, players run in rows in the dining hall, participate in acting exercises led by instructor Brent (portrayed in the film by Rassi), and attend dress rehearsals. While some aspects of the film’s story are fictional, others, such as the men referring to each other as “lover” or the tear-filled drama practices, are drawn from real experience. Ultimately, Rich Rich The film is about how theatre allowed these imprisoned men to dream beyond their life-changing convictions.

Whitfield, who spent more than 24 years behind bars, refused to let Sing Sing feel bitter. During his time there, he wrote several novels and screenplays, and earned a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science and a master’s degree in theology. “I felt like I wasn’t going to fall victim to this,” he says. “I wasn’t going to let the system destroy me further by helping me destroy myself.”

Whitfield appears in a brief scene in Rich Richas a prisoner who asks Domingo Divine G to sign a book. He also serves as a writer and producer on the film – and is thrilled to have Domingo play him. “Since fear of the walking deadI loved Victor Strand. [Domingo]“It was like, ‘Oh, Victor Strand is playing me, that's a no-brainer,’” he says.

Many former prisoners Rich Rich The cast members play themselves in the film, not a fictional character. They may not be professional actors, but the producers implemented a financial model where every member of the cast and crew, from Domingo on down, received the same daily and weekly wage. For Quidar, working with formerly incarcerated men had a profound impact on the production, as well as on him personally.

“Once you see the humanity of someone inside these cells and behind these walls, it starts to hurt your soul,” says Kouider. “For me, it felt like I had a moral and personal responsibility as a citizen of this country and this world, and that I was taking responsibility in that moment.”

Before conducting initial research for the project in 2016, Koedar, a 39-year-old filmmaker who grew up in a Fort Worth, Texas, suburb, admitted that incarcerated people were largely invisible to him. During his research, Koedar came across a model from 2005 Lawyer An article that traced the auditions, rehearsals, and convincing performance of Sing Sing. crack the mummy codewhich shed light on prison rehabilitation programs. After connecting with Boyle and having breakfast with Whitfield, Clarence “God's Eye” MacLean (who appears in Rich Rich As a Sing Sing alumnus himself, and other Sing Sing graduates, Koedar was all the more motivated to show how the theater program was thriving in a bleak environment.

Prison “peel”[s] “This system deprives people of their individuality and humanity,” says Kouider. “A person becomes just a number, not just a name first… These moments of closeness are like electric shocks that might wake you up if the system didn’t touch you personally.”

In the summer of 2022, film crews began shooting videos of the exterior of Sing Sing. Prison Complex. The interior scenes were shot inside a decommissioned prison, a correctional facility in the Hudson Valley’s Downstate. (Sing Sing Prison is still an operating facility, which posed insurmountable logistical challenges for filming, says Koedar: “Every screw and every little piece of glass had to be detailed and accounted for in the camera.”) But having so many cast members with such a shared history in prison raised one question: Would filming in a correctional facility re-traumatize former residents?

For MacLean, who also serves as a writer and producer on the film, it took some adjusting. The green prison uniforms were “itchy,” he says. “When we wear the same clothes, the same uniforms that are so easily recognizable to prisoners, we feel a great deal of fear,” MacLean says. “But the purpose of what we do, the purpose of the messages in this film, is much more important than any fear any of us might feel.”

McLean spent 17 years in Sing Sing prison for robbery, and he appreciates how the RTA gave him and others permission to trade in their numbered uniforms for a jeweled gladiator’s plate, a Hawaiian shirt, or a cowboy hat. The theater company was able to create art without restrictions: they auditioned for lead roles, practiced vocal warm-ups, improvised fight scenes, and embraced their emotions. McLean started out as a two-line background character in an RTA production called Stratford decision He then starred as Hamlet in crack the mummy codeillustrated arc in Rich rich.

“It felt like prison was on the other side of the door,” says McLean, 58, of performing in RTA plays. “Here, we are free. We are free to express ourselves, we are free to communicate. I can stand in front of my brothers and cry now and no one will judge me.”

Sean “Dino” Johnson, who also appears as himself in Rich Rich“We’re here to be human again and enjoy things that aren’t in our reality,” Johnson says in the film. Johnson, a large, 6-foot-4 man, was a co-founder of RTA and describes it as a program that helped him maintain his sanity.

“A lot of us have a mental prison,” says Johnson, 59. “We’re not physically imprisoned, sometimes we’re mentally imprisoned. I found my freedom beyond the wall through creativity and the arts, and it was powerful. The arts taught me how to travel mentally.”

Singing Singing The general audience that filled the temporary auditorium seats at the film also benefited from the creative expression of their peers. John Adrian “JJ” Velasquez, who plays himself, was one of the audience members. He says he was “part of the spirit” of the rehab program, and came away from the screenings entertained and informed.

“I don’t want to separate myself from RTA because RTA is in my DNA,” says Velasquez, 48.

Velasquez, who was paroled after serving more than 23 years in prison for manslaughter, had been released less than a year when he got the call in 2022 to join the production. He admits that walking into the dressing room filled with green prison jumpsuits brought back memories of the cold showers, short haircuts and emptying of his pockets when he was first processed. “I fought for 23 years, seven months and eight days to get out of prison so I wouldn’t come back and put on some green jumpsuit and act like I was already living,” he says.

But this time it was different. While they were filming Rich Rich For four weeks in the brutal summer heat, they were reminded that the establishment no longer had any power over them. They controlled the narrative, just as they had on the RTA stage.

“Acting is playing a role, right?” Velasquez says. “So if our audience can put themselves in our shoes and realize the reality that is in front of them, no matter what they are going through, no matter what point they are at in their life right now, they can also change. They can change everything. We did that.”