Performing rehabilitation: Reentry, art, and identity
This article investigates the implications that theater role-taking has on identity transformation for individuals recently released from prison in the United States. Drawing upon 15 in-depth and semistructured interviews with individuals recently released from prison involved in a theater program,...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
Punishment & society
Year: 2025, Volume: 27, Issue: 4, Pages: 826-844 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | This article investigates the implications that theater role-taking has on identity transformation for individuals recently released from prison in the United States. Drawing upon 15 in-depth and semistructured interviews with individuals recently released from prison involved in a theater program, this study finds that theater role-taking provides the gateway to personal identity role-taking at three levels: the self, the family, and the broader society. At each level individuals are simultaneously accessing the roles of the “agentic self,” “the responsible family member,” and “the productive citizen.” These personal identity role-taking opportunities have implications for how individuals engage in “performing rehabilitation” or the presentation of self, which identifies reentering individuals as “changed.” As individuals engage in a presentation of self that are aligned with the rehabilitative ideas of the state, the theater program extends notions of rehabilitation that mirror those found across the reentry landscape. |
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| ISSN: | 1741-3095 |
| DOI: | 10.1177/14624745251344299 |
