In the opening scene of the 2025 Oscar-nominated movie Sing Sing, John “Divine G” Whitfield (played by Colman Domingo) delivers a staggering monologue from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But as the curtain falls and the applause fades, Divine G doesn’t exit the theater in street clothes. He zips up his prison jumpsuit and returns to his jail cell.
Sing Sing tells the true story of a small group of inmates at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, who participate in a program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), an organization to “model a justice system grounded in human dignity rather than punishment.” Through the arts, those incarcerated enter into a community where flourishing is possible. In a summer abuzz in the grandeur of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey or the latest Spider-Man installment, it’s this quiet film from last year that’s captured my imagination.
In the film, the RTA group at Sing Sing decides to pivot from their bent for Shakespeare to a far-fetched comedy the group writes together, journeying through the struggle and joys of performing a comedy in a seemingly hopeless place. The challenges of incarcerated employment, high rates of recidivism, and general acclimation to life after prison are real factors for the incarcerated. That coupled with other dramatized portrayals of brutality and disadvantages for those behind bars were factors contributing to my prison assumptions before watching the film. But where Sing Sing feels different is that at its heart are, well, heartbeats; heartbeats of men who have found a way to express themselves in their circumstances through art.
The group practices in a room that’s one crucifix away from a sanctuary. Bright light floods through large windows, clothing the group in the vaulted ceiling room. The men are silly as they play warm-up games before rehearsing lines. There are scenes of them in folding chair circles reminiscent of AA. In this sacred circle, they share their troubles and what an anchor the program has been for them in their rehabilitation. In Sing Sing, the RTA members see each other as brothers, not fellow inmates. The film makes an explicit point to show how they refer to each other as “beloved.” During a particularly tense conversation, group newcomer Divine Eye uses a slur to describe another member. Divine G responds: “We don’t use that word in here. We use ‘beloved.’” Another RTA member, Sean “Dino” Johnson, says to Divine Eye, “We’re here to become human again. To put on nice clothes and dance around. And to enjoy the things that are not in our reality.”
In his book Hunting Magic Eels, Richard Beck describes how stories orient us to a hope outside of ourselves and how he’s seen it play out with his own involvement in a prison ministry. Pulling from Tolkien’s “On Fairy-stories” he describes the centrality of enchantment: “Fairy stories help us assume a particular posture toward the world and our lives … This is what the men in my Bible study so desperately need, an outward turn toward grace, help, hope, and a conviction of worthiness that comes to them from beyond the ruin of their lives and the confines of their prison cell.” Channeling Tolkien, stories have the power to recover a clear view of our reality and “see things as we are (or were) meant to see them.” Therein lies the power of recovery and healing; that we would be able to encounter stories that are, in some very real ways, transforming us for our good. There are no dragons or sorcerers or rings to rule them all in Sing Sing. The film’s enchantment is witnessing the inmates testify to the power of stories by acting them out upon a stage.
To be sure, reimagining is no Band-Aid to a broken world. It does not dismiss the pain, nor did it remove the sentences for those confined in Sing Sing. Rather, reimagining frees us to see our groaning world as a world that’s loved so much for it to be rescued and transformed. Since the program began at Sing Sing 30 years ago, RTA is now active at thirteen other penitentiaries. Fewer than 3% of RTA participants return to prison where recidivism rates nationally stand around 60%. These are hopeful numbers worthy of celebrating. And if the goal of Sing Sing was to artistically portray that a creative program led to successful prison reform, then it should be considered a huge success. It wouldn’t be hard to find some thematic elements of RTA’s success, retrofit this as “redemptive creativity,” and apply it to other industries for personal and communal flourishing; the books would fly off the shelf!
But the efficacy of the program paled in comparison to when I found out that almost all the actors in Sing Sing played themselves in the film. Men who were once bound, now free, acting out their rescue story. Not only did Sing Sing testify that hope could be found in a hopeless place, the very men who found this hope bore witness to its power on the screen.
It makes me consider the way Jesus’ ministry was constantly reminding and refocusing his followers to see things as they were “meant to be seen,” and how many head-scratching looks he received when he talked about his upside-down kingdom, as if there was a different world he saw filled with impossibilities and strangeness and hope he was bringing forth to us. How do we make sense of a God whose ways do not compute? Or how do our modern sensibilities consider the parables of foolish fathers, farmers that sow seeds in parking lots equivalents, or how the inmates of Sing Sing have the audacity to find hope upon a stage? Tolkien implores us that “we need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity — from possessiveness.” Too often, I’m like Nathanael when Philip implores him to come follow Jesus of Nazareth in John 1:46. Consigned to his opinions of the place and its people, Nathanael scoffs, “What good can come from Nazareth?” I need the brother and sister who, like Phillip, respond “Come and see.”
When I think about the gospel and how it might speak to my own reimagining, I look to the saints who display a grace that speaks to the realities of everyday life and carries me forward. I have the Mad Farmer, the Junior College Basketball Coach, the Saint of Second Chances, and now the saints of Sing Sing. It is these and other flashes of grace that give me a different story and speak to a bigger story to order my days.
As snippets from real RTA performances rolled along with the final credits, I thought of the line in Isaiah about how in the new heavens and the new earth, swords and spears will be fashioned into farm equipment. My mind wandered to the prisons that will lay dormant on that glorious day. Except, that is, when we might gather in sanctuary rooms deep within their walls, light the stage, and testify with stories and songs of rescue from the old world now past. It’s that future hope that grounds me in reality, Jesus of Nazareth constantly adjusting my eyes to how his world’s meant to be seen.
