When I came to the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) theatre at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in 1995, I’d been sentenced to 17 years for robbery. It was not my intention to watch a play. They were doing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I saw my brother Dino who was playing Big Chief, the Native American guy. I knew Dino from elsewhere in the jail, but not for this.
I got involved. I found a fascination for Shakespeare that I really didn’t expect. I didn’t think I’d understand the language. And I didn’t at first. But it fascinated me enough to research and study it: I loved becoming able to translate that so that others could feel the intensity of it.
After being restricted to just watching for a year, I went on to play so many roles. I played a nobleman’s ghost who comes back to haunt Richard III. That was a fun role; minimal lines, but a ton of expression. Twelve Angry Men was another good one.
The most poignant role in my life, though, would be Oedipus Rex. Because Oedipus ran from a prediction and then right into the consequences of that prediction. That was kind of parallel to my life, because I realised that I had been running away from and straight back into the same issues. I learned that about myself while doing Sophocles.
There’s a freedom that comes with being on stage. As a prisoner locked in a six-by-nine, or a Black man in society, your liberty is limited to certain things.
The connection that I got from the stage came from not only playing those characters but also researching how they lived. Those were the times that I realised that I wasn’t even in prison any more. I was freer than the guards. I went to Greece in my imagination. I went everywhere. I was freer than most men on the planet because I was able to go anywhere I wanted to, become anyone I wanted. All of these lives that might parallel some things in my own life – or might not. Maybe something completely different, you know?
Most nights, it was my peers, my brothers, coming to see me. But on the last night of every production, we invited playwrights, directors, producers from Broadway. Politicians would come, and Harry Belafonte came, which thrilled my mother.
Something that related to a current event or issue was always laid down somewhere in the play. So we began working on the messages that we wanted to send to the other side of the wall through art – including our own play Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code, which provides the structure for the movie Sing Sing and in which I play a version of myself.
The RTA company changed as new people came and others went home or got transferred to other prisons. But the core stayed the same and we created a steering committee who were elected by the group and were charged with the day-to-day functions and keeping the integrity of the programme up to standard. Fortunately, I never got transferred.
When I came home in 2012, I had six more classes to get my bachelor’s. I was working and I was going to school at night to complete my degree in behavioural science. All while I was still on parole.
Then I had to either graduate with the guys that I was going to college with on the outside or return to Sing Sing and walk the stage with RTA. I chose to go back. The six classes weren’t really the struggle. That’s the moral root – we want to keep brothers hopeful on the inside that change is possible. The Oscar stuff [Sing Sing is nominated for three Academy Awards) is hopeful on a personal level, of course, and people inside get to see that we can reach the highest echelons if we so choose. But it’s easy to just treat it as this trendy thing, to be the “ex-offender turned good”. It’s not as easy as that.
Now after the Oscars I’ve got another movie I’m going to start shooting in April. But the stage is where you go to get replenished. This is where you go to sharpen your sword as an actor and get the tool right. And get that feeling of an ensemble sharing the pressure of the next scene. You don’t get that with the screen, you can’t get it. That little camera lens is really not big enough.
• As told to Lindesay Irvine
• Sing Sing is in cinemas worldwide and Clarence Maclin is nominated for best adapted screenplay at the 2025 Academy Awards on 3 March.
