Alcatraz: Art Behind Bars

Co-designed and co-produced by Mona Thompson, Andrew Evans, Jeff Kessler, and Myrton Running Wolf in partnership with Stanford’s Arts Institute, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), and Theater and Performance Studies Department as well as SHN Theatricals and the U.S. National Park Service.

In the summer and fall of 2013, a 4-person team from the d.school collaborated with over 70 actors, dancers, choreographers, musicians, and designers to produce a one-night-only interactive theatrical experience on Alcatraz Island. The design built on the layers of real history of the island as well as fictional storytelling. Participants created their own prison passports, saw dance performances in the dining hall and hospital, drew projected graffiti on the walls, listened to site-specific audio recordings in solitary confinement, and talked to ghosts of prisoners in the visiting windows.

The production was part of the d.school’s Redesigning Theater project that used processes and tools from design thinking to create theatrical experiences that would be engaging to a younger audience.

The event was written up in the San Francisco Chronicle and won an Isadora Duncan Dance Award (Izzie Award).

Photos by Yuto Watanabe and Eric Gillet