Mason Exhibitions Arlington will host an interactive theater experience with Voices Unbarred. Voices Unbarred employs a tactic of Theater of the Oppressed, a revolutionary art form that helps people analyze the world around them, explore social and political issues, and create solutions, to examine issues surrounding incarceration. It employs games, dialogue, and interaction between audience and performer. These ideas will serve as a framework for the development and evolution of stronger ideas for us to all take to heart and action!

Voices Unbarred will deploy their curated interactive program, Rehearsal for Change, where you'll engage with thought-provoking activities and witness real stories from people with lived carceral experience. In the final activity of the event, you'll break out into small groups to collectively brainstorm new policy ideas that reimagine the prison system.

About Voices Unbarred: Voices Unbarred, the programming arm of Ally Theatre Company, centers the voices of people impacted by incarceration and collaborates with theatre practitioners and policy organizations to creatively reimagine the prison system and advocate for change. At the core of Voices Unbarred’s strategy is organizing people directly affected by incarceration and centering their ideas. Voices Unbarred Community Advocates use their lived experience and learned theatre techniques to advocate for themselves and the changes they want to see in the system. This includes changing current prison conditions, working towards the end of mass incarceration, exploring restorative justice and other approaches to healing harm, shifting disparaging narratives about people who have been impacted by incarceration, and exposing the systemic racism and intersectional systems that funnel a disproportionate amount of Black community members into jails and prisons.

Former Rehearsal for Change YouTube video

Questions about this event should be emailed to Alissa Maru (mailto:amaru@gmu.edu).