With regard to the article about Mark Rylance’s Shakespeare workshops in Brixton prison (‘That’s what saved me’: Darren Raymond and Mark Rylance on the prison drama workshop that brought them together, 30 August), I was lucky enough to experience one of them, which had a profound impact on me. It was my first time inside a prison, and after passing through security it was a real surprise to find myself in a proper drama studio. Thanks to the initiative of Bruce Wall and the London Shakespeare Workout, a former canteen had been converted into a drama space.
For the workshop that I witnessed, Mark had been working on a Shakespeare speech with one of the prisoners, who then performed it to the rest of the group. In a quiet, sensitive manner he presented the speech – not by Othello or one of Shakespeare’s male characters but by Cleopatra mourning Antony. The astonishing thing was the response of his audience – no mockery from prisoners in a high-security prison at a fellow prisoner playing a woman, but complete respect for an actor performing a role.
