Let My Brother Go

Let My Brother Go

“While there is a criminal element I am for it.”
(from Not In My Name, a play against the death penalty by The Living Theatre)

In this new work of Living Theatre Europa the company returns to its research on the roots of violence examining the historical and actual phenomena of prisons, within the framework of the Legacy of Cain (a cycle of plays by The Living in the 70's). We begin this work with a simple question: at what point in our childhood did we become aware of prisons and incarceration and having awakened to this aspect of life what was its psychological effect? Was not the incorporation of the paradigm of punishment and imprisonment the actual means of ensuring obedience and acceptable behavior and our integration into society? Were we not perhaps frightened, even terrified, when we saw the world as prison and prison as essential fact of the world?

The violation of human rights (both political and economic) the world over manifests itself in the exploding prison populations across the globe. The ever growing Prison Industrial Complex is not merely a symptom of the failure of our modern institutions to resolve long standing issues, but is rather a strategy of governments to maintain old forms of privilege, cloaked in the rhetoric of security and anti-terrorism, and even economic development.

One out of every 100 persons in the USA are in jail, disproportionately persons of color. In 2008, over 7.3 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, — 1 in every 31 adults. With some 2.3 million prisoners, the U.S. leads the world in imprisoning its citizens. The U.S. has about 5 percent of the world's population, it has about 25 percent of the world's known prison population.

...people tend to take prisons for granted. It is difficult to imagine life without them. At the same time, there is a reluctance to face the realities hidden within them, a fear of thinking about what happens inside them. Thus, the prison is present in our lives, and, at the same time it is absent from our lives. To think about this simultaneous presence and absence is to begin to acknowledge the part played by ideology in shaping the way we interact with our social surroundings.....

The most difficult and urgent challenge today is that of creatively exploring new terrains of justice, where the prison no longer servers as our major anchor.

Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?

This new work by the Living Theatre Europa also seeks to call attention to the little known movement to abolish all prisons. Through works such as Angel Davis's “Are Prisons Obsolete?”; George Jackson's “Soledad Brother”; Frederick Douglas's “Narrative...” and others, we follow the argument that connects slavery to prisons. The cry of Julian Beck: No one is free until all of us are free! is not just a Utopian dream but rather a proposition and a challenge that calls upon action; action akin to the abolitionist movement in pre-Civil War America; the civil rights, women's, antiwar and disobedience movements of the 1960's; as well as the campaign of defense of The Black Panthers. Each of these strictly American stories will be explored as well as the historical birth of prisons during the Enlightenment, and the roots of violence and slavery.

In addition to the above themes the role of music, especially Spirituals, Blues and Rock and Roll, as arts of liberation will be explored and integrated into the work.