CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

What Difference Can a Play Make?

Still from Ask Angola.

Writer and actress Liza Jessie Peterson says there was no better location than the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison, to perform her one-woman show about prison labor. Angola sits on a former plantation; Norris Henderson, the founder & executive director of VOTE (Voice of the Experienced), recalls picking cotton there as a former inmate. But “The Peculiar Patriot” was shut down by authorities in the middle of the performance, and Peterson and Henderson have ideas as to why.

What difference can a play make? That’s the question at the heart of “Angola Do You Hear Us? Voices From a Plantation Prison”, presented by Aubin Pictures and MTV Documentaries. The film recounts what happened........

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