As an attempt to reintegrate prisoners into society, the MultiArt Festival for Inmates gives them a chance to have some fun, and perform for an audience.
Inmates, both men and women, from six prisons in Romania participate in the festival as they approach their release date. Their crimes range from drug dealing, theft, to attempted murder and tax evasion. The point is for ordinary people to meet and interact with inmates, and overcome the prejudices they might have. The inmates first take part in an audition to be selected for the plays. This year, they performed plays like Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“The inmates don’t belong to the prison, the society is the one that gives birth to crime, it’s the one that maintains it and is the only one that can fix this … there are a lot of people in the penitentiary who are young, who are very poor, who are condemned for theft, who are uneducated. There should be more attention, energy and money spent on education, and then people would have the tools that would give them the opportunity to make better choices,” festival founder Dana Cenusa said before she died.
(All Images via: Andreea Campeanu/ Al Jazeera)