Three fucking cheers for everyone who participates in this!
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, and again and again and again and again:
ART KILLS CRIME!
The proof is in the pudding: Among inmates who participate, there is a 6% recidivism rate. The national average rate of recidivism?
68%.
It’s incredible. And a much needed hard stat to prove the things that artists in underground spaces already know: art kills crime.
And that both participation and patronage is barred to those below the poverty line has the effect of confirming the labels society puts on them. It creates the social prison that boxes them in.
Lack of access to the arts creates criminals. It is mindfuckery, it dictates subservience, and it bars the means to escape your plight.
And theatre, in particular, is required to create great communities that work together. The theatre is where you explore what is possible and work with others to make it happen. It breeds individuality that collaborates. Whereas poverty, and the endless grind that zaps all strength, energy and brain power, breeds isolation that is under constant attack, and so attacks back, constantly.
There is no working together where people are under constant attack. But where there is imagination, responsibility, collaboration, possibility, there is love. There is coherence. There is transcendence.
When society says, “We don’t collaborate with you,” society becomes the obstacle. And the more people are destroyed by it, the more society is destroyed back.
Art kills crime. It is the cornerstone of a functioning democracy.
And if anyone wants to roll their eyes at the people who “frivolously” pursue art when they should be “working,” understand this:
These are people holding society together with nothing, while you contribute nothing. While you promote crime. They are not frivolous, they are hope. They are not refusing to work, they are refusing to sell out and create their own demise.
You think Shakespeare is frivolous because you can’t relate. Because nothing has ever been life or death to you. Death is a faraway concern. Something you may brush against every now and then, if you trip or fall or get a disease, but best not thought of.
But for people kept hidden from view (so you don’t have to remember that death lurks. The elderly, prisoners, the poor), you MUST contemplate it, and deeply. Because when you are disappeared, death is right there to claim you where no one is looking. If you do not know the many possibilities inside of you, and the many limitations of the world around you, if you do not collaborate with others, while bringing your full truth, and look honestly at each other with appreciation for the new perspective –all that theatre teaches us to do–you simply have no hope of outmaneuvering a system that’s intent on you being a criminal. You have no comfort. You are not seen. You have no resources.
If no one can appreciate the beauty of your humanity, what else is there but crime? Crimes against others and crimes against yourself? Something must change in such a circumstance. Where there is no art, it changes through crime.
It’s as simple as that.
Want to support the arts right now? Get your SmutBones!
SmutMag 
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