I do Prison Theatre in my entire life | Saul Hewish #Episode 1

Saul Hewish is one of the country's leading practitioners in the use of drama and theatre with people who have broken the law. He was a founder member, and former director, of Geese Theatre (UK) (est. 1987), a deputy director of Geese Theatre (USA), and since 1996 has worked in a freelance capacity (trading as Acting Out Company) developing drama-based responses to crime within youth offending teams, social services departments, and special educational settings across the UK. Current freelance work involves being an associate artist of B arts, Stoke-on-Trent’s longstanding participatory arts organisation.In 1999 he co-founded Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation), with the writer and improvisation specialist Chris Johnston. Over the last 25 years this company has built a strong reputation for innovative and experimental arts-based projects within the criminal justice system in the UK and across Europe. This includes theatre and digital video projects in prisons as well as production of cross artform projects that span the divide between prison and the wider public. More recent work has expanded into on-going community-based work with non-offending populations, most specifically autistic adults through a project called The Social Agency. Rideout is currently the subject of a two-year AHRC funded research programme, Staging Justice, led by Dr Sarah Bartley at Central School of Speech and Drama.In addition to teaching at Warwick, he is a visiting lecturer on the MA Theatre for Community and Education at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts and has previously guest lectured at Central School of Speech and Drama, East 15 Acting School, Manchester and Birmingham universities. He is a co-author of Challenging Experience: An Experiential Approach to the Treatment of Serious Offenders and was a recipient of a 2005 Butler Trust Certificate Award, a national award which recognises exceptional work by staff in HM Prison Service. For those interested in his earlier work he talks about his experiences working with John Bergman and Geese Theatre in a chapter in Jan Cohen Cruz' new book, See Me: Prison Theater Workshops and Love (2024).