The play is the result of drama (process-workshops) with over 300 convicts serving time in two Serbian prisons. Their testimonies were used to prepare a forum play – an interactive theatrical form enabling the active participation of the audience and discussion. The cast includes several ex-convicts. The “PRISON SPA” has so far been performed in theatres in Novi Sad, Niš, Kragujevac and Belgrade and in three penitentiaries and will be staged in three other penitentiaries, subject to the Penal Sanctions Enforcement Administration’s consent. The play aims to acquaint the general and expert public with how the prison population lives and the problems they face.This play is one of the activities implemented within a one-year project “From Violating to Making Law”, carried out by the Theatre Research Centre ApsArt, the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights and the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights. The goal of the project is to enable convicts in Serbian prisons to themselves affect the conditions in which they are serving their sentences through theatrical expression, with a view to contributing to their effective resocialisation. It is one of a very few so-called Legislative Theatre projects implemented in the world.
Given that the play is interactive, the opinions of you, the members of the audience, are treated as the opinions of aware human beings who follow social developments and problems and who can help find adequate responses to them, each of you from your own perspective and on the basis of your own experience. Your suggestions will thus be included in the proposals for improving the current practices, which the convicts will then vote on and prioritise. The priorities will be forwarded to the representatives of the public authorities, who are now drafting a new law on the enforcement of penal sanctions. We, socially responsible citizens, have the knowledge and the skills to generate change.
