PAT GRANEY COMPANY
Keeping the Faith:The Prison Project
May 7–8…but the deadline for security clearance is April 13
Mission Creek Corrections Center
link to past review • press release
This is a great project. Here’s a link to Michael Hacker’s past review on SeattleDances; combined with the following press release, it should give you a sense of the important mission and the heartwarming/wrenching experience Pat Graney Company’s Keeping the Faith project comprises.
link to past review • press release
This is a great project. Here’s a link to Michael Hacker’s past review on SeattleDances; combined with the following press release, it should give you a sense of the important mission and the heartwarming/wrenching experience Pat Graney Company’s Keeping the Faith project comprises.
Press Release
(verbatim)
Pat Graney Company Kicks Off 15th Annual Prison Arts Residency at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women
Final Performance Culminates With “Thriller” Dance
January 27, 2010 (Seattle, WA) – 2010 is a milestone year for Pat Graney Company’s Keeping the Faith: The Prison Project. Its upcoming arts residency on the “inside” marks the 15th anniversary of the program’s inception. For the last 15 years, Keeping the Faith: The Prison Project has cultivated expression through art for offenders in the Washington State women’s prison system, beginning in 1995 at WCCW, the state’s largest facility for women. This year, the company will be in residence for the sixth time at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women, located just south of Bremerton.
2010 marks the second consecutive year that ex-offenders will be allowed back into the prison as Keeping the Faith program interns. This is a particularly exciting development in the program’s history. “For the incarcerated women, whose offenses vary from assault and burglary to drug possession or dealing to first degree murder, the involvement of ex-offenders in the residency is truly amazing,” Graney said. “The women respond so strongly to the presence and accomplishment of their peers.”
This year Seattle movement artist Ricki Mason is teaching Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. Visual Artist Rachel Brumer (this year’s Artist Trust Fellowship recipient in visual arts) is joining Marvel Comics artist Peter Bagge to create a large-scale graphic novel for the backdrop. The visual artists will be joined in the residency by Pat Graney, Artistic Director of the program, as well as writer & founder of Pongo Teen Publishing, Richard Gold, and Irish Screenwriter Barbara Bergin.
The theme of the residency will be shaped by the women themselves and will emerge from the expository writing sessions, and frame the final performance for fellow inmates and the public at the end of the residency in May.
The final performances: May 7 & May 8, 7pm. The public performance begins at 7pm at Mission Creek, with the audience checking in through security no later than 6:00 pm. For more information or to register for the performance, email christine@patgraney.org by April 13th. All audience must be cleared prior to attending.
About Keeping The Faith – The Prison Project
Keeping the Faith – The Prison Project is an arts residency program designed to enable incarcerated women and girls to discover a sense of identity within themselves and to develop that identity within the context of community – through the vehicles of performance, video documentation and a published anthology of their writings. Each year, the program culminates in performance where the participating women perform their own movement and writing, and display their own visual art for 200 members of the general public, 200 of their incarcerated peers, and the prison administration. This year’s program runs February 5 – May 12. Performances will be on May 7 and May 8, 2010 at 7pm at the Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women, and are open to the general public on a first-come, first served basis.
All audience members must be cleared prior to attending.
About KTF Transitions
After extensive work with women on the ‘inside,’ Company Director Pat Graney envisioned a program that would guide women transitioning out of prison to fully realize and utilize those skills. Pat Graney Company launched “Transitions” in 2008 to empower women to successfully transition from prison to community. This program is governed by ex-offenders, and is in residence at Seattle University and Helen B Ratcliffe women’s work release.
