Colman Domingo’s new movie shines a spotlight on an inspiring real-life theater program: Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), which puts incarcerated people in maximum-security prisons onstage.
As Domingo, 54, tells PEOPLE, RTA’s “mantra” is “to come in and make a real difference — and not just put on a play, but also deliver some beautiful messages that could be used as tools for life.”
Beautiful messages abound in A24’s Sing Sing, the new Greg Kwedar-directed narrative movie about RTA that features actual alumni of the program playing versions of themselves. Other than Domingo, Paul Raci and Sean San José, the cast is made up of men who were formerly incarcerated at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility or another prison nearby, and who participated in the organization’s theater productions.
“It all started with a group of men that just wanted to have a voice,” says Sean “Dino” Johnson, a founding member and current board member of the org. “It changed my life.”
A24
The self-described “introvert,” 59, recalls that before RTA he “wasn’t an effective communicator at all. And being a part of the arts, it gave me vocabulary, it gave me a sense of understanding of other people, and being able to listen better.”
Acting and collaborating with others onstage — in productions like volunteer playwright Brent Buell’s Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code, which is depicted in the film Sing Sing — built a sense of community that wasn’t there before, says Johnson. RTA “taught us how to work together, and we started learning from each other.”
Operating in six men’s and women’s correctional facilities within a 200-mile radius of New York City, RTA’s mission is to help “people in prison develop critical life skills through the arts, modeling an approach to the justice system based on human dignity rather than punishment.” Their success is evident: less than 3% of RTA members return to prison, compared to 60% nationally.
“The real power in RTA is the support and the humanity that exists when you’re around people from outside that are volunteering their time to pour into us while we are incarcerated,” says Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez, 48, who was imprisoned at Sing Sing for 23 years, seven months and eight days for a crime he didn’t commit. Like Johnson, he plays a version of himself in Kwedar’s film.
Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, who onscreen recreates his own participation in RTA’s Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code, is also credited in Sing Sing as a co-story writer (along with John “Divine G” Whitfield, played by Domingo). It’s been “such a wonderful ride,” the 58-year-old actor says, from first stumbling across the theater program within Sing Sing’s walls — he signed up because some of RTA’s volunteers were women, he admits with a grin — to premiering an awards contender at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.
“I met so many beautiful people and I’m continuing to meet beautiful people every day,” Maclin says. RTA has “just introduced me to a whole new world.”
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“I want people to recognize the human potential behind the walls that could come out into the world and lift our communities up,” says Kwedar, 39, who witnessed RTA’s impact up close when he and co-screenwriter Clint Bentley volunteered with the program at Stormville’s Green Haven Correctional Facility Prison.
“The beauty of RTA is it’s not about producing better actors to come out in the world and be in movies and TV — which I hope many will continue to do — but it’s about how they will be leaders in their community, how they’ll help repair them,” the filmmaker says.
Sing Sing is in theaters now. For more information on Rehabilitation Through the Arts, visit rta-arts.org.
