Credits for Felon: An American Washi Tale
March 2: Panel Discussion Info
March 3: Call to Action Info
March 4: Celebration Info
A Note from the Program in Theater
The theater program and the Lewis Center are honored to continue our relationship with Reginald Dwayne Betts, whose powerful art-making humanizes significant contemporary injustices. This piece of theater has allowed us to deepen existing relationships, to forge many new relationships and to share theater making with many different kinds of student communities. Our program is very grateful to the many partners, on campus and off, who make these many enriching collaborations possible.
— Jane Cox, Director of the Program in Theater
A Note from the Director
Washi (Japanese handmade paper) connects people in mysterious ways. It led me to Japan to work with paper artist Kyoko Ibe, and over a decade later it precipitated my work with Dwayne Betts on his solo show springing from his extraordinary book of poems Felon. Washi is made of natural elements, tree bark and water, guided by human hands, water allows the fibers to connect and form beautiful sheets of paper, strong, but soft to the touch. Theater brings out the richness of the washi, glowing with the possibility of light thanks to Jane Cox, and washi brings out the unique quality of theater: a moment of presence with strangers, forming connections across vast differences of culture and languages, to listen to each others’ stories.
— Elise Thoron
A Note from the Author
Paper, perhaps surprisingly, is a key part of the prison experience. Paper gets you in and sometimes gets you free. Chasing paper on the front is the catalyst to cuffs for many; making papers—that is, parole—is the hope of freedom for others. Inside, letters from family are lifelines, earning the slang moniker “kite” and there is an edge of exhilaration when a kite is slipped into a cell by a guard during mail call or under a cell door by another prisoner. For years after my release, I carried around a slip of paper in my wallet. A receipt for twenty-five dollars and seventy-one cent, the last of the money I’d earned working for 45 cent an hour in a Virginia prison. The experience is marked by paper. Transforming the paper into art complexifies the experience, makes it more than loss, more than the account for crimes and prison time that seem to stalk.
— Reginald Dwayne Betts
About Freedom Reads
Freedom Reads is a first-of-its-kind organization that uses literature to confront the hopelessness and desperation that accompany time served in prison. Through three core initiatives — Freedom Library, Freedom Ambassadors, and Freedom Stories — it seeks to remind all people that freedom begins with a book.
Freedom Reads aims to place millions of books into prisons, one 500-book Freedom Library at a time, opened in every prison dormitory and housing unit in the United States. Placed in the center of prison housing units, a Freedom Library becomes a locus of conversation and community. The Freedom Libraries are objects of beauty, handcrafted by teams that include people who have served time in prison. The name Freedom Library is a reminder of how freedom has often followed education. The curved shelves of the bookcases remind all that the universe bends toward justice — and through conversation and engagement, fellow readers share in the joy, belonging, and possibilities that such stories provide.
The Freedom Library and other literary initiatives support the efforts of people in prison to imagine new possibilities for their lives.
Related Exhibition: Washitales
Please visit the Hurley Gallery in the Lewis Arts complex on the Princeton campus to see Washitales, an exhibition by set designer and visual artist Kyoko Ibe, through March 5, 2023.
Learn more about the cycle of theater known as Washi Tales
About the Call to Action Organizations
We invite you to learn more about the related partners listed below and consider supporting one or more of these organizations.
- The Petey Greene Program
- New Jersey Together
- Returning Citizen Support Group
- New Jersey Institute of Social Justice
- The Fortune Society
- Prison Teaching Initiative in Princeton University’s McGraw Center for Teaching & Learning
- Students for Prison Education, Abolition and Reform (SPEAR) in Princeton University’s PACE Center for Civic Engagement
- New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons (NJ-STEP)
Felon: An American Washi Tale by Reginald Dwayne Betts
March 2-4, 2023, in Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center
Presented by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Theater and cosponsored by Princeton University’s Department of Art and Archaeology, the Office of the Vice President for Campus Life, the Princeton University Center for Human Values, School of Public and International Affairs, the Humanities Council, Princeton University Library, Campus Conversation on Identities, SPEAR, Trenton Arts at Princeton, Princeton University Preparatory Program, and the McCarter Theatre. Other outreach partners include NJStep, the Trenton Public Library, Princeton Public Library, Roundabout Workforce Development Program, Town Hall NYC and the Fortune Society.
Featuring
Reginald Dwayne Betts
Production Team
Director and dramaturg: Elise Thoron
Set Designer: Kyoko Ibe
Lighting Designers: Jane Cox and Tess James
Sound Designer: Palmer Hefferan
Animation: Louisa Bertman
Projection consultant: David Bengali
Movement consultant: Chesney Snow
Stage Manager for Felon, Director of Production for Freedom Reads: Tyler Sperrazza
Production Stage Manager, Stage Manager for Felon events: Carmelita Becnel
Sound Engineer: Kay Richardson
Assistant Stage Manager: Milan Eldridge
Set design support: Evan Alexander, Odaira Hiro, Tamura Tadashi, Yoshimura Tai
Prison paper: Ruth Lingen
Scenic wall: Melissa Riccobono
Freedom Reads bookshelves: MASS Design Group; Shannon Velázquez & Dan Velázquez
Berlind Electrician: Michelle Poulaille
Berlind Run Crew: Phoenix Edmond, Dylan Harris, Dan Synn
A2: Keanu Karim, Savannah Yost
Felon: An American Washi Tale Festival
Curator and co-host: Jane Cox
Organizer for LCA: Mary K. O’Connor
Additional organizers for LCA: Kim Wassall, Darryl Waskow, Elaine Milan, Joe Fonseca
Supporting faculty for LCA: Shariffa Ali, Tess James, Chesney Snow
Festival co-host: Chesney Snow
Student workshop leaders: Chesney Snow, Nathalie Charles ’25
Visiting student hosts: Shariffa Ali, Ash Jackson ’25
Prison Teaching Initiative lead: Chris Etienne
Prison Teaching Initiative Assistant Director: Jill Stockwell
PUPP Director: Jason R. Klugman
PUPP students from: Trenton Central High School, Ewing High School, Lawrence High School, Nottingham High School, Princeton High School
PUPP teaching fellows: Janet Devine, Trenton Central High School; Rodrigo Córdova Rosado, Astrophysics; Rhiannon Pare, Art and Archaeology; Laura Nelson, History; Néhémie Guillomaitre, Chemical and Biological Engineering
PUPP workshop faculty: Jallicia Jolly
UCHV curator: Melissa Lane
UCHV coordinator: Jane Peters
UCHV panel organizer: Regin Davis
NJ-STEP Director of Curriculum: Nia Tuckson
PACE band/Trumpet Chics Coordinator: Nafeesah Goldsmith
PACE band/Trumpet Chics Music Director: Jamal Dickerson
Director of Education, The Town Hall: Jocelyn Bonadio-de Freitas
SPEAR leaders: Alan Gutierrez ’25, Emery Jones-Flores ’26, Nathalie Charles ’25, Alan C. Plotz ’25
Special Thanks
Special thanks to Cathleen Baker, Terese Betts, Micah & Miles Betts, Taylor Bigelow, Rochelle Calhoun, Lou Chen, Kathleen Crown, Rachael DeLue, EmergeCT, Oz Enders, Jennifer Garcon, Jamie Goodwin, Jenny Greene, Anne Jarvis, Erik Thomsen, Dorothea von Moltke and Labyrinth Books, The Washi Family, and Jeff Whetstone.
Run Time
Approximately 75 minutes solo performance; pause; 45 minutes paired event.
Special Notes
Please silence all electronic devices including cellular phones and watches, and refrain from text messaging for the duration of the performance. No video/audio recording, photography or flash photography permitted.
March 2 — Panel Discussion
Organized by Princeton’s University Center for Human Values
Felon: Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts. Cover artwork by Titus Kaphar. Image courtesy W.W. Norton
Reginald Dwayne Betts
Betts is the author and performer of Felon, who was formerly incarcerated and recently received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, advocates for access to literature in prisons, and he is the founder and CEO of the nonprofit organization Freedom Reads. A poet and lawyer, he is the author of four books. Betts’s poetry collection, Felon, won an American Book Award. The artwork on the cover of Felon was created by artist Titus Kaphar.
Lidal Dror
Dror (Panel Chair) is an Associate Research Scholar in Philosophy at Princeton and will become an assistant professor at Princeton in Fall 2023. Dror’s philosophical interests are centered around issues of oppression and the barriers to reaching a just, free and equal society.
Nafeesah A. Goldsmith
Goldsmith is co-founder and COO of YFOF (Youth Function Over Form), a youth justice organization focused on creating successful prison-free futures, and founder and CEO of RISE (Real Intervention Supports Excellence), a mission-based sustainability initiative that supports at-risk communities. Goldsmith participated in the Clinton College Bound/NJ-STEP program and other educational programs during a period of incarceration.
Christia Mercer
Mercer is the Gustave M. Berne Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and the founder of Just Ideas, an educational program in Brooklyn’s high security Metropolitan Detention Center, in 2018. Mercer was the Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching in Princeton’s University Center for Human Values in 2020-21.
Caroline Subbiah ’23
During the panel, Caroline Subbiah ’23, a senior in UCHV’s Values and Public Life certificate program who is writing a senior thesis in Princeton’s English Department on prison literature, will read an excerpt of writing — “Algebra of Dissolution: Humanity’s Encryption by Prisoner Number” — by F. Wills, who is currently incarcerated.
F. Wills
Wills negotiates existence through poetry and writing. He learned violence early in life and it has taken him a lifetime to unlearn it. Fittingly incarcerated, he wears the privilege of being an NJ-STEP student, earning a B.A. in Justice Studies from Rutgers University-Newark. This reading is an excerpt from his Senior Thesis on the work of R. Dwayne Betts which he will submit this May. After completion of his degree, he wishes to explore the intersections of genders, race, and violence within theological discourses in carceral settings.
Please read: “Algebra of Dissolution” (Triad of poems in response to Reginald Dwayne Betts’ performance of Felon: An American Washi Tale at Princeton University on March 3, 2023)
Algebra of Dissolution by F. Wills
III
Urgency
Before the source of
words drown
in a sea of stone
and forgetfulness;
and life,
so easily threatened
by the vertigo of
narrow corridors
closing down on me,
finally smothers the flame,
I must write.
Searching for images
I am trying to fit
my head through bars,
just to get stuck
like a child
playing on a veranda;
but, these bars are wrapped
and writing is not
a child’s game.
II
Inside the mausoleum of forgetfulness
remembrance is infamy, and
I do not remember.
All I have left are words;
clay for a new vessel
wanting to be, and not being.
Its wedged etchings
on damp earth:
cuneiform memories,
I can’t read.
My tomb is well secure; but, the lock, despite appearances,
opens only from the inside.
I am naked in a bare cell
and I can’t find the key.
I
497799;SBI000376666C;
Lock Bag R, 4D3 (2)0f-ten I
4get things:
A birthday, my own;
her face and smile; the names
of my teachers; the books
I read; the poems
I composed, but
never wrote down,
and what else?
I do not remember.
Un-remembrance is my lot.
Prison is a two-way Alzheimer’s:
The real thing. forces a person to erase
The past here,
The past erases the person.
My name?
Tsch, tsch, tsch!
[Read in Tony Mo”ison-ean;
aspirating word and shaking head]
Sign these lines;
They now belong to you.
It’s much easier that way.
March 3 — Call to Action organized by Prison Teaching Initiative
Hosted by Chris Etienne
Representatives from several organizations share information on how their work impacts formerly or currently incarcerated people:
- Antonne Henshaw — Meet Em at the Gate and in partnership with Meet Her at the Gate with Severe Solutions LLC
- Een Jabriel — The Petey Greene Program & The Pace Center Community Partner in Residence
- Boris A. Franklin — New Jersey Together
- Nicole Guyette — New Jersey Institute of Social Justice
- Edwin Ortiz — Returning Citizen Support Group
March 4 — Celebration
Hosted by Chesney Snow
Performances by:
- Gavin Young and Devan Sakaria (Princeton Day School)
- Storyteller’s Lab, including Marvin Wade, Chon Smith, Israeil 44. Mugzy, Lionel “Doc da Edutainer” Limage, Robert Rose, Laron Murray, Tony Hanif, Olivier “Oil D”, Julie Hernkind. Storyteller’s Lab is an arts education collaboration between The Town Hall (New York City) and The Fortune Society, led by Lecturer in Theater Chesney Snow.
- Camden-based youth band PACE (Preparing Artists for College Entry) featuring The Trumpet Chics including Jayden Inoa, Nazih Johnson, Hassan Sabeee, Andrew Manning, Anthony Burgos, J’lynn Henry, Shaleah Navarro, Tenenfig Dickerson, Alani Burke, Noni Burke and Aniya Coleman; led by Jamal Dickerson. Introduced by Nafeesah Goldsmith.
Land Acknowledgement
An estimated 10 million Native Americans lived in North America before the arrival of European colonizers. Many thousands lived in Lenapehoking, the vast homeland of the Lenni-Lenape, who were the first inhabitants of what is now called eastern Pennsylvania and parts of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware.
Princeton stands on part of the ancient homeland and traditional territory of the Lenape people. In 1756, the College of New Jersey erected Nassau Hall with no recorded consultation with the Lenni-Lenape peoples.
Treaties and forced relocation dispersed Lenape-Delaware to Ohio, Kansas, and Oklahoma. We acknowledge the violence of settler colonialism and pay respect to Lenape peoples past, present, and future and their continuing presence in the homeland and throughout the Lenape diaspora.
For more information, see the websites of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Princeton (NAISIP), Natives at Princeton and Princeton Indigenous Advocacy Coalition.
Lewis Center for the Arts
Chair: Judith Hamera
Executive Director: Marion Friedman Young
Director of Program in Theater: Jane Cox
Producing Artistic Director, Theater And Music Theater Season: Elena Araoz
View a full list of the Program in Theater Faculty & Guest Artists
For a look at all the people working behind the scenes to bring you this event, view a full list of LCA staff members »
The programs of the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts are made possible through the generous support of many alumni and other donors. View a full list of LCA Supporters »
