Prison Boxing

Before Sing Sing, there was Leah Joki and her one-woman show Prison Boxing. Want to know what prison is really …like?  Leah Joki takes the audience on a journey into prison culture and bureaucracy based on her career as a theater teacher and arts administrator in the most high-profile rehabilitative arts program in the country.  She worked in 30 prisons in California for more than two decades. She explains how she went from the Juilliard Drama School to falling in love with maximum-security prison. In her one hour, tour de force performance she plays 14 different autobiographical characters.  Prison Boxing gives us a compassionate, yet realistic glimpse inside prison in a way that reflects humanity in all its forms: from humorous… to utterly horrifying.  The themes of mass incarceration, lack of rehabilitation and sentencing reform are deftly explained by Ms. Joki, an unlikely, but very likeable tour guide. (Adults only.)