Prisoners in India have been given leading roles performing in Shakespeare plays as part of an innovative process aimed at rehabilitating offenders. The unorthodox recruitment strategy was uncovered as one in a series of stories showcasing Shakespeare’s impact in South Asia, which are currently being featured in an exhibition at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Sairah Amin, an English Literature student at Birmingham City University, found the story of the Rangayana Mysore theatre company who created the process and spend time travelling across prisons in India to find inmates who can perform in their plays, including King Lear, Othello and Hamlet. The practice is used to help prisoners engage with a range of emotions through their performances and encourage them to look at their offenses from a different perspective.
An image of two inmates performing one of the Bard’s most iconic scenes, where Hamlet discovers the skull of Yorick, is currently featured in the Shakespeare in South Asia exhibition which runs until September 8 at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon. The exhibition has been put together by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust supported by Dr Islam Issa, Senior Lecturer in Literature at Birmingham City University, as well as six of his students from the School of English. It highlights the significant impact of the playwright in that part of the wor
