Ritual4Returnexpands

Theater program for citizens returning from incarceration grows thanks to Department of Corrections grant

Ritual4Return, an Arts & Well-Being program that uses theater, improvisation, mask-making and storytelling to help those returning from incarceration process and overcome the shame and trauma of their experiences, presented its fifth cohort’s performance in December.

Always an emotional event, this edition of the Ritual4Return final performance was heightened by the news that the program is growing.

One of the performers, “Charlie,” was a returning citizen from Boston — who traveled to participate in the Newark class in order to launch the program in his home city, in partnership with a group that currently runs an in-prison theater program.

In addition, Ritual4Return was awarded a $145,000 grant from the New Jersey Department of Corrections to continue the Newark program for another year and to simultaneously start a pilot Ritual4Return program in Camden.

“More than 700,000 people are released from prison every year, and they’re given a bus ticket and twenty bucks and told: ‘Welcome to the world.’ Systemically, that’s insufficient,” said Kevin Bott, founder and Executive Director of Ritual4Return.

“Some have been imprisoned for more than 30 years, and suddenly they’re on the streets. As one of our actors said in our most recent performance: ‘I looked for a phone booth and then I found out they didn’t exist anymore.’ Their sense of disconnection is overwhelming, and for most of them, there’s no attempt to address that.”

Bott will help train the organizers of the program in Boston; he’ll then head to the Twin Cities, where theater administrators hope to launch another iteration of the program.

“What we’re hoping to do is build up a national network,” Bott said.

The next performance by Ritual4Return participants at NJPAC is on May 2.