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Synopsis

Formed in 2018 at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, IL, the Incarcerated Mass was more than just a theatre troupe of men serving de facto life sentences. It was a community where movement, storytelling, and study made possible—even for a moment—collective dreams of liberation. Not To Be documents their first and last public performance in July 2023, shortly before Stateville shut down and the group was scattered across other facilities. The film is a powerful reminder of how prisons retraumatize and reinscribe racial violence, adding to a growing movement to bring back parole in places like Illinois.

Filmmaking Team

Melissa Lorraine (director) is the Co-Founding Artistic Director of Theatre Y, an award-winning ensemble and experimental FREE theater on Chicago's West Side. In addition to working with fresh and seasoned talent, Theatre Y also illuminates buried talent, working with incarcerated men to re-humanize our punitive justice system through artivism.

Alex Morelli (producer/editor) is an artist and filmmaker based in Chicago, IL. Drawing on both experimental and documentary traditions, his films examine how people make home, resist carceral barriers, and use art to engage with family and community. His films have screened in festivals and galleries worldwide and his work has been supported by the Flies Collective, the LEF Foundation, and the Gotham Film and Media Institute. In 2022, Filmmaker Magazine named him one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film.

Justin Jones (co-producer/cinematographer) is a documentary filmmaker, cinematographer and photographer living and working in Chicago. Drawing inspiration from both cinéma vérité and rock and roll photography, Justin films with a lens that is relationship oriented, experiential, and held at an intimate distance. He seeks out characters who live on the fringes and strives to tell stories through the in-between moments. He believes that movement is a catalyst for authentic expression, and often works in the arts of music, dance and theatre. Justin studied at Michigan Technological University and DePaul University and is a frequent collaborator with Theatre Y.

Shireen Hamza (associate producer) is an historian and artist who works on the history of science, medicine, and culture, and brings collaborative, embodied and artistic research methods to her work. She teaches in both university and prison contexts.

Ben Kruse (sound designer/mixer) is a Chicago based sound engineer that for many years has worked across film, podcast and musical mediums as a sound editor, sound designer, sound effects editor, re-recording mixer, foley editor and composer. He loves crafting intricate and detailed soundscapes that help paint emotional canvases. Recently, he served as the Co-Sound Designer Sound Effects Editor on Brittany Shyne’s Sundance award-winning documentary Seeds.

Kennedy Smith (colorist) is a filmmaker, photographer, and colorist, who loves to collaborate with creatives. From musicians and skaters to designers, Kennedy enjoys breathing life into their visions and experiences, and capturing serendipitous moments.

Director’s Statement

I came into this work—namely education in prison—the way we find many meaningful things: in search of healing. In 2017, I survived abduction and predatory sexual assault when I got into a car that I mistekenly thought was my Uber. I was diagnosed with PTSD and became useless to my own theater company. It was only after extensive movement therapy with friends and colleagues that I could find some semblance of normalcy. I was compelled to pay this care forward. So the following year, I began offering movement therapy for trauma rehabilitation at Cook County Jail and Stateville Correctional Center.

This work immediately inverted my narrative about crime and prisons. It became clear that these institutions were the real crime—symptoms of centuries of racist policing and economic disenfranchisement. I realized that people often traumatize others out of their own complex traumas, which our carceral system refuses to address. More than anything, meeting those extraordinary men helped restore my faith in my fellow humans.

As the years went by and our group evolved into The Incarcerated Mass, I came to understand that there is no healing for any of us until there is healing for all of us. We needed each other to heal, we needed to see one another, to confess and cry together and to remember that ‘I am because of who we all are.’

After all, when we banish those who have created harm from the world, we serve no one. Incarceration leaves a new trail of victims in its wake, more traumatized humans. I do not feel safe inside a system that locks people up and throws away the key. Proximity, interdependence and mercy have been my freedom and my oxygen as the world has become more frightening and complex.

-Melissa

Special Thanks

Lucia Agajanian, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Spencer Bambrick, Emily Bragg ,Steve Bynum, Taji Chesimet, Senator Lakesia Collins, Chaplain Damien Davis, Deena Eichhorn, E.R. Emison, Shayla Gammon, Chaplain Megan Gleason, Eliza Gonring, Raphel Jackson, Alice Kim, Liz Lazar, Susan Lucci, Fred Moten, Nadia Pillay, Naomi Puzzello, Neomi Rao, Dr. Christine Rivers, Arianna Salgado, Andrew Schoen, Karl Soderstrom, Barbara Sostaita, Lauren Valice, Senator Rachel Ventura, Indigo Wright, Rachelle Zola

Email info@theatre-y.com or call 773-908-2248 to arrange a screening!