William Head Prison sits on a desolate peninsula of rock, surrounded by dense forest on one side and the fathomless depths of the Pacific Ocean on the other. Despite this lonely setting—or perhaps because of it—the inmates locked inside have found a way to bring escapism, community, and creativity to life in the facility. Through their long-running William Head on Stage (WHoS) program, which began in 1981, they perform shows the public can attend—provided they buy a ticket and pass security screening. The annual stage productions range from classics like Macbeth and Waiting for Godot to more absurdist fare like Albert Camus’ The Stranger.
This year, the production is 45 Years in Orbit, a bespoke piece written by playwright Rick Waines at the inmate’s request. The plot takes place on planet Kalgon, where there’s never been any crime—until now.
“[The] first thing I thought of was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” says Waines. “We have a planet named Kalgon that has had millennia of sort of utopian civilization, where no one has ever broken any laws. Until Josh breaks ‘the orb’ and chaos ensues on Kalgon, and the Kalgonian council has to figure out what to do with Josh, so they decide they’ve heard about this other blue orb a long way away that has a lot of experience with orb breakers, and so they decide to come to Earth.”
As fun and silly as that may sound, there are darker, more meta themes afoot, themes that the prisoners can relate to and had asked Waines to incorporate.
“I wrote them a script which they have contributed to by helping me to write something that makes as much sense to them as it did to me; for example, I put in lots of references to [Samuel] Beckett and [Bertolt] Brecht,” says Waines. “These guys were kind of like dramaturges, and that’s how the [writing] process went […] They wanted a break from the personal storytelling [of previous years], and while I don’t know that that was necessarily universally desired, generally speaking, people wanted to have a more light-hearted show.”
It makes sense that the inmates would want to have more say in the process. The men are responsible for all of the background organization of the shows, and the operation of the WHoS non-profit board that secures funding for the plays. William Head is now a minimum-security facility, which has created higher turnover, with inmates serving shorter sentences. It wasn’t always that way, and some inmates are not merely in for a petty crime.
“Interestingly, most of the guys that we work with are lifers,” says Waines. “A good 50 percent of the guys we’re working with are guys that have been in for a long time and are in for a long time [to come]. The stability of the William Head [inmate] board is a little bit less. There’s a lot of turnover each year, for the past five years.”
This is where another non-profit has stepped in to lend a hand and keep the momentum going.
“Full Spectrum Arts Society has been supporting William Head to coordinate their schedules, help them with choosing what they want to do each year,” says Waines. “We help them with the grants that they write to raise some money, and then, of course, there’s the third party, which is William Head Institution, and we’ve been blessed with wardens who have seen the value of it and allow and support us to continue our work.”
45 Years in Orbit
7:30 pm Friday, October 16
1:00 pm Saturday, October 17
7:30 pm Saturday, October 17
7:30 pm Friday, October 23
7:30 pm Saturday, October 24
$40.11, William Head Institution
whonstage.ca