Home from Prison - A Bleak Picture at the Victory Gardens Theater

There’s something about traveling that every trip has in common. At some point, you have to come home. What happens when you have nothing positive to come home to? What if there is no one to welcome you back? How do you get back in the swing of things?

Living in the Chicago area this is not a problem for us. One great thing about coming back is being able to enjoy Chicago’s phenomenal theater scene. With more than 100 theaters of every variety, we get to pick and choose from a great wealth of plays. This week we saw Lettie at the Victory Gardens Theater. It will be playing through May 6^th. If you live in the Chicago area, I strongly recommend that you see it.

Lettie, the title character, has just been released from prison after having been incarcerated for seven years. Sent to a halfway house to live, she starts a welding training program. Uninterested in becoming a welder but going along with the program as well as she can, all she wants is to see her children again. Her sister, who has been taking care of them in Lettie’s absence, has other plans and thus, the drama begins. As the story unfolds, we learn that Lettie has little to return to with few prospects on the horizon. Will she succumb to past influences or stay straight? With community support for ex-prisoners weak at best, staying straight is even more difficult than you’d think. I don’t want to give away the ending in case anyone has the opportunity to see Lettie. It is a very powerful, poignant drama.

Boo Killebrew, the playwright, did an excellent job of depicting the problems that returning prisoners have re-integrating into the outside world especially if their lives prior to imprisonment had no healthy connections or relationships with which to reconnect. The play was skillfully directed by Chay Yew and the acting was excellent. Prior to staging the play, Ms. Killebrew and the cast visited Grace House, a halfway house similar to the one depicted in Lettie, where they visited with women who had pasts similar to Lettie’s. The afternoon they spent there gave them extra insight to skillfully present this play.

With America having five per cent of the world’s population and twenty-five per cent of the world’s prison population, Lettie addresses an important issue. What kind of treatment are we giving to people who are released from prison? How can they avoid returning to prison when it is so difficult finding employment for those with prison records? Where do they live if they have no family to take them in? Most people don’t realize that people with prison records are ineligible for government subsidized housing. Some private agencies are addressing these issues but so much more needs to be done. Go see Lettie at the Victory Garden Theater. It will give you a lot to think about.