Vol. 95, No. 27
ia
i
Summer Sky
According to information supplied
by the Pennsylvania State Educa-
tion Association, Dallas and Lake-
Lehman School Districts will each
get a an increase in state subsidies
for the 1984-85 school year of about
$200,000.
The PSEA estimates that Dallas
will receive approximately $215,000
more in its Equalized Subsidy for
Basic Education — the amount the
state pays for education in the
district — for 1984-85 than it did for
the school year just completed, and
will also get about $16,000 more as
part of the Estimated Remediation
Increase program set for the
coming school year.
As a result, Dallas’ total slice of
Theatre
BY MATTHEW BERNSTEIN
For the Dallas Post
It was no ordinary day at the
State Correctional Institution in
Dallas last week.
Jay Miller, director of activities
at the prison, came in on his day off
to welcome the seven-member
troupe, Geese Theater Company,
which has been touring correctional
institutions across the country.
Together the performers deliv-
ered a hopeful message, spiced with
the gritty realism of prison life, to
the local inmates.
The actors showed up in their
slightly tumbledown, converted
school bus (their home on wheels);
they passed the security check and
entered a different world.
“It’s literally mind-blowing,’* said
actor Jamie Peck, of nearby Wav-
erly, after the show. “It's a whole
section of society I hardly knew
existed."
It’s a section of society to which
Re Theater has dedicated itself
ice its inception in 1979. Since that
time, the troupe has worked with
men, women and young people con-
fined in well over 50 institutions.
Their workshops and perform-
ances have received praise from
prisoners and prison officials alike.
Virgil G. Iverson, assistant staff
chaplain at the U.S. Disciplinary
Barracks, Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, wrote: ‘Your ability to
-identify confinement issues ... has
been honed to a fine edge. You ...
are sensitive to feedback of those
whom you help.... This method of
drama knows no end of usefulness."
At SCI, Geese performed its prin-
cipal production, ‘The Plague
Game.”’ The plague is crime, which
destroys everyone it touches —
offenders, victims, wives, children,
the state funding pie for education
is seen increasing from the $2,885,-
653 received in 1983-84 by approxi-
mately $230,000.
At Lake-Lehman, the district got
$2,589,440 for 1983-84. That basic
subsidy is estimated to go up
approximately $192,000 for the
coming year, while the district is
also seen receiving a little over
$14,000 in the Remediation Increase
program. As a result, the total
increase in the state subsidy forseen
by PSEA for Lake-Lehman in 1984-
85 should be just over $207,000.
Both districts end up towards the
middle among Luzerne County
school districts in terms of both the
total subsidy and the increases.
Dallas Post / Bill Savage
taken.
They are not close to the approxi-
mately $10,000,000 Wilkes-Barre
Area will receive from the state for
the coming year, and neither are
their respective increases.
Among the 11 districts in the
county, Dallas will rank seventh in
total subsidy and sixth in total
increase.
Lake-Lehman’s subsidy should
only be higher than Crestwood and
son Area's, placing it eighth.
According to PSEA, the state is
attempting to reach the point where
it eventually picks up the tab for
half of all the costs of education in
Pennsylvania.
25 Cents
gathering at Harveys Lake.
could do about the situation.
thought it was a joke.
riding his trail bike.
Dalias Post / Bill Savage
Thriller
Lisa Green (left) and Megan
Sheehan of Dallas show off
prizes they won in the Pepsi-
Cola Michael Jackson
Sweepstakes. Lisa won a t-
shirt and Megan a Jacksons
jacket. The girls entered the
sweepstakes at the Dallas
IGA.
“Once you're incarcerated, and
you get out, you're an ex-offender,”
explained Ellen Stoneking, an
actress with the company. “Once it
touches your family, they're stuck
with it. No cure.”
But if there is a cure, it is found
in the power of the family. One of
the few statistics which holds any
hope, says Geese founder John
Bergman, is that which deals with
the release of offenders to their
immediate families. In these cases,
says Bergman, there is a drastically
reduced likelihood that the offender
will be rearrested within the first
year.
Unfortunately, the prisoner's atti-
tude toward his family can be con-
fused with negative behavior, hostil-
ity and violence. With “The Plague
Game’’' and its uncompromising
realism, Geese Theater attempts to
show the prisoner the dark side of
his world and suggest that there is a
way out.
The play begins with the arrest of
an actor. His wife, portrayed by an
actress in the company, must then
go through a series of visits with the
prisoner and with several family
agencies — lawyer, social services,
school and landlord.
If the couple can get to the fourth
visit, they have weathered the tem-
pestuous storms of conflict asso-
ciated with crime and its aftermath.
The object of “The Plague Game’
is simply to leave the game.
The object for the actors is more
complex. What leads an individual
to spend as much as a year and a
half in and out of prisons, traveling
in a crowded bus, sacrificing pri-
vacy, comfort and money?
Stoneking, unofficial leader of the
company, said that over two years
as a professional actress and secre-
tary “bored me to death.”
“This is life experience,” she said
‘Plague Game’
The plague is crime, and the
members of Geese Theater
Company try to show prison-
ers they can get free of the
sickness. In this scene from
last week's show at the
State Correctional Institu-
tion, an actor portrays an
inmate husband, who is
interrupted during a visit with
his wife.
never experience in regular thea-
ter.'!
Peck plans to spend more than a
year with Geese. ‘As an actor, it’s
right up my alley,” he said. “It's a
magnificent training ground.”
Concerning comforts, actress
Amy Hausknecht seemed to speak
for the company when she said,
“There's always food and always a
place to stay.”
Stoneking remarked that some
have likened Geese Theater to the
activists of the 1960s.
“We're quiet activists,’’ she said
with a smile.
Jay Miller may also be called a
quiet activist.
The Wilkes-Barre resident has
been working at the prison since
1970, where he has gained great job
satisfaction from dealing with the
ey: fis
inmates.
“These people have needs,” he
said. “I try to fulfill their needs.”
But the job has its frustrations.
“We have a large inmate popula-
tion, and limited resources,’ Miller
noted.
As director of activities, he
stressed that prisoners should
ngton Jour
bies, crafts and special events such
as Geese Theater's performance all
Miller added.
He was especially impressed with
“The Plague Game,” as a form of
therapeutic psychodrama. “It helps
(the prisoners) work out their real-
life issues by watching them in the
form of fantasy onstage.”