There are few films released in the last few years whose authenticity is a priority as much as director Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing, starring Colman Domingo (Rustin) as John “Divine G” Whitfield, who is a part of and helped spearhead the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program at Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison (the program has branches in prisons throughout the country), in which incarcerated men and women put on theater productions of both classic work and the occasional original effort.
Aside from Domingo and Sound of Metal’s Paul Raci (who plays Brent Buell, a real-life, non-inmate volunteer teacher who effectively runs the group and gives acting lessons), most of the cast of Sing Sing are men who used to be incarcerated and were alumni of the program, including breakout star Clarence Maclin (nickname Divine Eye) and co-star Sean Johnson (“Dino”), both playing versions of themselves as the group embarks on a rare original production, and the experience teaches them discipline, how to control and redirect emotions, and how to work with others toward a common, artistic goal.
Back in May, I had the chance to sit down with Maclin, Johnson, and the Oscar-nominated Raci for a heartfelt and surprisingly emotional conversation about their experience being a part of the film and Raci’s unique position guiding the performances of some of these first-time film actors. Sing Sing opens in Chicago this Friday; this interview was conducted just before their appearance at this year’s Chicago Critics Film Festival. Please enjoy…
Which of you were in this play originally?
Sean Johnson: I wasn’t. I went home by the time it happened.
So how did Greg and Monique pitch this to you and get you on board to do this?
Clarence Maclin: Greg got in touch with me through Brent Buell; he basically got in touch with all of us because he stayed in touch. Greg saw the Esquire magazine article and wanted to start this project, so they started making the calls. For me, he didn’t have to do a lot of convincing . If you put a spotlight on the ground, I’m going to jump into it and do my thing; that’s how I give it up. As soon as they told me about it, it was a no-brainer, I’m on board.
SJ: What happened for me is, I sit on the board of RTA still. At the gala one year, Brett walks up to me and says, “You were one of the original people in , and this guy is going to make a movie about it. You should come down.” And I’m looking at him like “I’m old. Really?” To understand, I had to go home and go back to work. I’m living day to day, but when he brought this up, I started daydreaming about being in this movie. And I felt that love that I have for art, and realizing this is a moment. I have to jump on this. I wanted to get back on the ward so bad.
Did either one of you have the chance to keep up with acting once you went home?
CM: Once I came home? No. Bills! I needed money to pay my bills.
SJ: I did one film, The Producers. I’m in there singing and dancing. I loved it, but I couldn’t keep it up because I had to pay bills too. So this film was like a calling to me. RTA? Put me down.
CM: All the elements were there, sign me up.
The discipline you need to become a good actor, were you able to take that mindset and apply it to other parts of your life?
SJ: Absolutely.
CM: When I got into RTA, I came on board for the wrong reasons. I saw a lot of women on stage, and I wanted to get around some of that.
Oh, so that part of the film is accurate.
CM: That’s the truth! But once I got in, and because most of my bros were already in there, and I know these guys are serious guys, I saw them in there and that gave me permission to come in. Once I got around these women, they became more like aunties and sisters, family members. That changed everything. So even though I got in for maybe not the most noble reasons, it turned out that it changed the trajectory of my life. Those people that I was once lusting toward became great advisers, great friends, great educations, great listeners when I needed them to be.
SJ: It changed my life drastically. I have to take you back to when I was 14 years old. If you’d asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have have looked you in the face and said “I want to be a gangsta.” And that’s the life I led. I was an introvert, couldn’t effectively communicate, couldn’t talk to more than two or three people at once. If it was more than that, I didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t realize that until I was engaged by the arts. That’s what started shaping me into the man I am today. It empowered me in a way that I can’t even find the words to explain. It felt so good to be able to communicate.
I want to give you an example. I’d just came down from Attica and had confrontations with officers, and I didn’t care if they put me in the box . And there was this one officer that would say things to me every morning just to get under my skin, and one day I was looking at him after he said “Tuck your shirt in, Johnson.” And I’m walking toward him smiling, and got right up to him and said “I like you.”
And I tucked my shirt in, and other officers ran up to him and said, “What did he say?” “He said, ‘He likes me.’” The officer couldn’t figure out what just happened, because I threatened him with my body, but my words were nice. And I’m sitting in the mess hall laughing and realizing that that RTA shit works. It works! You can say anything you want to in life, but it’s how you say it. So I started using sarcasm and all these different tools of communication that helped me be more effective. I use that every day. I talk to at-risk youth, give lectures, law-enforcement conferences, gang interventions. It made me very effective at speaking to large audiences. RTA built me.
Paul, your character is a real person. Tell me about how much time you got to spend with him and what questions you were asking him.
Paul Raci: He’s a prince among men. I can’t say enough about the guy. He was on set every day. I just observed him with the men, having lunch. The way he would talk, his mannerisms. He’s like a flower child from the 1960s, he and his wife. He’s a lover. When I got back from Vietnam after doing two tours there, I was pretty angry, fucked up on drugs, a lot of things going on, and I ended up at the University of Illinois Chicago - Circle Campus, and I met an acting teacher. I thought I was a rock ’n’ roll singer at the time, because that’s all I did. I thought I was going to live fast and die hard, but he showed me art and the art of acting and changed my life. And I’m not just talking about acting teacher, but Brent is a great acting teacher, the one I had was great. But it could be a math teacher that opens up somebody’s mind and makes them realize they can do this. They always say “Those that’s can’t do, teach.” That’s bullshit because there are teachers out there who change lives. Brent changed these guys’ lives. He’s a wonderful man.
Well he had a duel role because he not only wrote and directed this play, but he’s also their acting coach, which is not the same job. How did you go about capturing someone who is all of those things to these men.
PR: Just by observing Brent. And I’m as old as he is and I’ve met a lot of acting teachers, gone through a lot of exercises. You can’t go through that many years of working in this field without picking up some stuff. Brent was not hard to figure out—he’s a lover and he’s got a soft demeanor about him. He can make any hard edge into a curve. He’s a great guy. He cares.
SJ: To have someone tell you that you can do something, and for your entire life, you’ve been told you can’t, that’s a breath of fresh air and it’s inspiring.
Back to Greg for a second, what do you remember about the first time you talked to him and what did you like about his approach to this story?
CM: Communicating with him definitely sold the project for me, because he did a lot more lifting than talking. He was really interested in the authenticity and keeping the integrity and not exploiting us or making us look foolish or showing what you would ordinarily see in a prison movie. When we were in prison, we watched prison movies, and we don’t like any of them . I don’t see myself in any of them. They aren’t real, at least not in my experience. That’s not what prison is like. I did 17 and a half years, and those issues you’re talking about, maybe prisoners in the ’70s had to deal with; they aren’t our issues or our realities in these prison movies.
SJ: There were other outside directors that approached us about doing projects on the outside—I think you were still in at the time—and it was buffoonery. We all looked at each other and said “I’m not going back to that.” I don’t even want to send that message out to the world. I think that’s what brought the heart of the project together, the fact that there was no buffoonery; it was all realness. All our lives, we’ve been told men don’t do this, men don’t cry. That’s unrealistic. Men cry in prison, in the middle of the night.
CM: You put that curtain up and cry in the mirror.
SJ: And that doesn’t make you any less of a man. We just wanted to keep it real because we’ve got a lot of kids out in the world who watch these movies, and they’re molding themselves based on what they see. That’s not real.
Is it easier playing a version of yourself, or is that the hardest acting you’ve ever done?
CM: It’s hard! It’s hard to act like you don’t know how to act.
SJ: If you want to play yourself, it’s easy to play yourself how you are now. But to go back to who you used to be, you have to vulnerable and truthful, and a lot of us, when we look back at our past, we don’t like the truth we see. To play that, it’s difficult.
PR: Greg, the director, was very vulnerable himself. We were in these situations and having group discussions, and all of a sudden something happens, if you get choked up, that would be okay. Our director showing his vulnerability to a bunch of guys, it was great to have that quality in a leader.
Somehow, we’ve gotten this far in the conversation without talking about Colman. My favorite scenes in the film are when Colman and Divine Eye are by that window, because every time we see you there, you’re both coming at the moment from a different place. You actually reverse attitudes through the course of the film. What do you all learn from working with someone like him, both as an actor and a human being?
CM: I learned so much from Colman. He allowed us to have our space and grow. We knew who he was, and he’s phenomenal. There’s no question, just like Paul. These guys are giants. But they definitely gave us room to rise to the level that we needed to rise to. Colman showed us how it’s big on stage and that the last guy in the seat way in the back, he has to hear every enunciation. But in films, we bring it down and pull everything back, and that’s what Colman showed us.
PR: Colman is selfless. He’s not Colman Domingo. He’s a giving, loving man.
SJ: I learned so much from Colman and Paul. There were scenes where I would just watch them, and I’m on the side just looking, and some of these scenes didn’t make it in the movie, but they were so impactful to me. For example, there’s a scene where going home, and everybody is happy for him, and Colman…I saw that man show empathy for him, anger at his situation, and being happy. And I’m just looking at him and his face, and I asked him “What was your motivation for that scene? What were you thinking about?” And he told me how he was fighting with the compassion of his good friend going home, and he has to stay here. It was just perfect, the layers.
What do you all want people to think about as they’re walking out of this film?
CM: There are a few things, but I hope they consider that individuals behind the wall are people, human beings, and everybody has the ability to change. Whatever three-second decision that you made to get here should not define who you are forever. The next thing is, you can look into your own community and find individuals just like me. I’m not the exception. There are so many brothers and sisters who are incarcerated right now who are just as deserving of your attention as I am because they are potential leaders too, and they’re coming home. Ninety-percent of people in prisons are coming home. They’re going to be in the grocery line with you, at the laundromat, in the restaurant, in the movie theater. How do you want them to be? Do you want them to be people who realize their own humanity, or do you want people who just did time in the yard kicking rocks? Who do you want to come home?
PR: This system we have is so full of shit. Rather than devalue somebody. There are indigenous tribes and somebody does something wrong in the community, and they put them in the middle of a circle, and everybody turns around and loves him. “I remember the time you did this for my auntie. I remember when you were a little boy.” Rather than calling someone a piece of shit, like you see in the beginning of the movie. It’s all about devaluating and power, rather than “You’re a lover, and I remember when you were just a little boy.” And the whole community tells them that they love them. That’s what they should be doing in these prisons, instead of what they’re doing now.
SJ: This prison system is designed to break you down. There’s no building up. I want someone to walk away from this movie knowing that a man, a woman can learn to love again. We can become desensitized living life on life’s terms. But you can learn how to feel again, how to love again, and there is an army of men and women coming home from prison looking to be part of their community in a positive way, but they aren’t given an opportunity. We can love again.
I’m so glad you all are here; thank you all so much.
SJ: Our pleasure.
Support arts and culture journalism today. This work doesn't happen without your support. Contribute today and ensure we can continue to share the latest reviews, essays, and previews of the most anticipated arts and culture events across the city.