This poignant play, written by current and formerly incarcerated authors, uses gripping truths and soulful dialogue to reveal the human cost of America’s for-profit justice system. The story follows Omar, pulled back into the prison system after trying to lift his family out of poverty, who struggles to maintain a sense of humanity while fighting to keep his loved ones close.
According to NJ.com, “From institutionalized racism to addiction to the prison-industrial complex, this is a play about a great many large, pressing social challenges, but at its core it is a play about one family and its struggles to remain united as their world steadily crumbles. Impactful, warm, and unrelenting, this play that began as an experiment turns out to be an excellent examination of the human cost of a harsh and inhospitable world.”
All profits from the book will go to a prison re-entry fund run by The Second Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth, New Jersey to help the playwrights secure housing and continue their schooling upon release.
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“While the play’s characters ring with authenticity, Caged never neglects its serious political messaging. The play illustrates Black lives in dialogue with a racist system, in which state power reinforces cycles of violence while moments of extraordinary integrity and bravery break through the cracks. Fifteen minutes before the play begins, a dimly lit stage reveals a barred cell. Inside, Shaky Brown, ‘a gifted blues musician serving a life sentence,’ plays the blues. Throughout the play, his cell haunts the stage. Yet, his music—at once marginal and persistent, beautiful and full of grief—remains as well.”
—Temperature Check, PEN America
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Watch the full video of our event with Ruth Wilson Gilmore on Covid-19, Decarceration, and Abolition, hosted by Naomi Murakawa. Gilmore’s new Haymarket book Change Everything: Racial Capitalism and the Case for Abolition, will be released in February, 2021.