Global Theatre - Surviving Troubled Waters: From Prison to Freedom through Music - Tuesday, March 21 at 7 p.m.

Naomi Blount Wilson: “I was born in the ‘50s and raised in North Philadelphia. I had a great childhood and discovered that I had musical talents at a very early age. I recorded my first single, I’m So Young, when I was 15. During that time, I went down a dark path, quitting high school, then becoming a drug addict and alcoholic. In 1982, I went to prison for conspiracy to murder. I was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. While in prison, I obtained my GED, earned an associate’s degree in business and a paralegal certificate. In 2019, after serving 37 years in prison, my sentence was commuted, and I was released from prison. I now work as a commutation specialist for the Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania). I am also a program consultant for the Shining Light Academy where we try to unlock human potential inside of all American prisons. Life is now, like a box of chocolates.” – Naomi Blount Wilson

Dinny Risri Aletheiani is a faculty member at the Council on Southeast Asia Studies, the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and director of Southeast Asia Language Studies at Yale University. Her publications and research are in curriculum studies, curriculum history, historical archives, free school, language learning and policy, education and history of education, schooling in Indonesia, indigenous education, and education in Southeast Asia. She was a Fulbright scholar and has acted, danced, and choreographed internationally. Recent stage appearances include Echoes of Attica (2022) and Islands: The Lost History of the Treaty that Changed the World (2017), which was broadcasted by NPR, RRI, and featured on BBC Radio. As a dancer and dance choreographer, she has worked on community-based dance projects with themes of diversity and history.

Quick Center for the Arts Fellow

Ron Jenkins is a recipient of Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships. His prison theater work in Indonesia, Italy, and the U.S. has been supported by the R.F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, The Asian Cultural Council, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. Jenkins has written books on theater and social justice as well as articles for The New York Times, The Jakarta Post, and The Yale ISM Review. He has translated and/or directed plays by the Nobel laureate Dario Fo for productions at the Yale Repertory Theatre, American Repertory Theater, and the New York Theatre Workshop. His documentary plays have been commissioned by the Mellon Foundation, the U.S. State Department, the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is a 2022-23 Senior Fellow at the Yale Divinity School’s Institute of Sacred Music.

THEATRE THAT CHANGES OUR WORLD