JDPP - Time In

Time In

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York Residency

The Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble (JDPE) and a capella gospel singers Women of the Cross (WOTC) join forces to present an eye-opening and moving multi-arts performance piece integrating dance, music and text. In a uniquely authentic and unusually provocative way, Time In focuses on the theme of time as experienced by women—mothers, daughters, wives—serving time in prison. Many of the women—real women who have shared their stories—have battered histories of physical abuse, drugs, and street life; many are good women who made bad choices and are paying the price.

Women of the Cross

By making the invisible visible and the unheard heard, Time In raises our consciousness, challenging assumptions about incarceration and stereotypes about those who are incarcerated. As so much of Judy Dworin’s art does, this piece wrestles with issues of gender, justice, oppression, racism and freedom by providing an outlet for those whose stories are too often untold, ignored or forgotten.

The piece incorporates the jarringly honest words and voices of dozens of women inmates at the maximum-security York Correctional Institution who participated in a six-month arts residency with JDPE and WOTC. The residency included an intensive five-day session in June that culminated in two performances of Time In at the prison, with inmates performing alongside JDPE dancers and WOTC singers.

(Click here to read reactions from invited guests who saw the piece performed at York or at one other preview presentation.)

The raw material generated during the residency provided fodder for the text and lyrics that are interwoven with imagistic dance movements to create an evocative performance mix. Unique and spirited harmonies counterpoint the movement and sound throughout the piece as audience members are led through a journey that begins with the prison’s origins as a Native American hunting ground. Women inmates at York collaborated in the development of songs and also dances.

(Click here to read what several inmates have said about their transformative, life-affirming experience with Time In.)

Novelist Wally Lamb, who leads a writing group at the prison, introduced the November 2, 2006 premiere at Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford. All Performances were followed by talk-backs with the cast as well as former inmates, some of whom are contributors to Lamb’s Couldn’t Keep It to Myself: Stories of Our Imprisoned Sisters.

Two special school performances were held in the Hartford area on November 2 and 3, 2006. Study guides were provided. Additional school bookings are invited.

To obtain a Time In Study Guide, click here