Rediscovering the Human with Kate Powers

My guest today is Kate Powers, a lifelong theatre kid who became an off-Broadway and regional theatre director. Her list of credits is long, but I wanted to talk to Kate about the unusual home she’s found for her work: maximum security prisons. Kate is the founding artistic director of the Redeeming Time Project, which uses Shakespeare to effect positive change for the incarcerated and the formerly incarcerated. She has been a facilitator with Rehabilitation Through the Arts (www.rta-arts.org) at Sing Sing Correctional Facility since 2009. 

Kate tells me how she discovered this work, how she runs her program, and the transformative effect of combining Shakespeare—famous for his depictions of all facets of human nature—with a prison population. I’m not gonna lie to you—I had goosebumps for most of this interview, and I think you might, too. If you do, I hope you’ll consider donating to help these programs transform lives—you’ll find links in the show notes.

Show links

Kate’s website

Kate’s Twitter

Kate on Spoutible

Organizations that do this work and can use our support:

Rehabilitation Through the Arts (New York)

Redeeming Time Project (Kate’s program in Minnesota)

Redeeming Time Project on Twitter

Shakespeare Behind Bars (Kentucky)

Marin Shakespeare Company/Shakespeare San Quentin (California)

Prison Performing Arts (Missouri)

The Actors’ Gang Prison Project (California)

Open Hearts Open Minds (Oregon)

Geese Theatre Company (UK)

Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble’s Shakespeare Prison Project (Australia)

Shakespeare in Prisons Network – Find a larger list by state and internationally here.

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Transcript

Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. My guest today is Kate Powers, a lifelong theater kid who became an off Broadway and regional theater director. Her list of credits is long, but I wanted to talk to Kate about the unusual home she’s found for her work, maximum security prisons. Kate is the founding artistic director of the Redeeming Time Project, which uses Shakespeare to effect positive change for the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:43]:
She has been a facilitator with rehabilitation through the arts at Sing Sing Correctional Facility since 2009. Kate tells me how she discovered this work, how she runs her program, and the transformative effect of combining Shakespeare, famous for his depictions of all facets of human nature, with a prison population. I’m not gonna lie to you. I had goosebumps for most of this interview, and I think you might too. If you do, I hope you’ll consider donating to help these programs transform lives. You’ll find links in the show notes. Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Kate Powers. Kate Powers, welcome to follow your curiosity.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:24]:
Thank you. So I start everybody out with the same question, which is, were you a creative kid, or did you find your creative side later on in life?

Kate Powers [00:01:34]:
I think I was a pretty creative kid. I think I was, forced on my own resources pretty early.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:43]:
So what did that look like?

Kate Powers [00:01:46]:
I’m the youngest of five. Two of my siblings are developmentally disabled folks. So my parents did the best they could, with the circumstances and the cards they were dealt. But I think by the time I was about 2, I figured out that I better get pretty autonomous pretty quickly. So I, I was always one of those kids who was very content to putter on my own, to do things only for my own, interest or, entertainment. Mhmm. And, yeah. So pretty early.

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:21]:
So did your parents encourage that or were they just kind of like, you know, you can do it for now, or were they too busy with your other siblings to even really notice?

Kate Powers [00:02:31]:
I think they were, they were supportive to the extent that they had capacity to be supportive. That’s cool. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:38]:
Makes a makes a big difference.

Kate Powers [00:02:40]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:41]:
So when did you realize that you wanted to do theater for real?

Kate Powers [00:02:50]:
That’s an excellent question. The for real part makes me laugh, because on a pretend level, I think by the time I was about 8, it was clear. But probably, it was about, the summer that I turned 15. I was an apprentice at a Shakespeare festival, and, I would say there was no turning back from there.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:10]:
Oh, that’s cool.

Kate Powers [00:03:12]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:12]:
So when you were 15, you figured this out. And then what did you decide to do next? Was it just I’m going to drama school? Or

Kate Powers [00:03:22]:
Pretty much. It was I’m going to drama school. Yes. Get out of my way. I’m going to drama school. My dad, my parent my dad took me to lots of auditions. I did a couple summer training programs, like Kate the Chautauqua Institution, things like that. My dad put his foot down about NYU because it was just too catastrophically expensive, both to pay the tuition and also to try to live in New York City.

Kate Powers [00:03:51]:
And that was completely beyond our level of resources. But other than that, they were like, if this is what you wanna do, Mazel Tov, kid.

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:01]:
That’s amazing.

Kate Powers [00:04:02]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:02]:
Because you hear so many stories that are the opposite.

Kate Powers [00:04:05]:
But we never had any of those, like, no. You should major in something sensible conversations. What are you gonna do when this doesn’t work out? I heard that from guidance counselors and from teachers who thought that I was wasting my intellect by going to drama school, and who wanted me to come to my senses, but, not for my parents.

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:25]:
I find that argument so fascinating, wasting your intellect by going to drama school. Yeah. I mean, it seems to me, and I was not a theater major though I am a theater fan, that there’s an awful lot of intellect that goes into putting on a good show regardless of what role you’re in for it.

Kate Powers [00:04:48]:
Sure. But we live in a capitalist society and the odds and the the conversation that mostly, we do not have with kids who go to drama school is that Lin Manuel Miranda is once in a generation. Mhmm. He’s amazing. He’s lovely. He’s an astonishing human being and a creative force, but most of the people who go to New York or Chicago or LA are not gonna have anything like that kind of stratospheric, experience. And so I think it would be great if we had more holistic conversations with kids in drama school about the various ways that you might apply what you’ve learned and what that could look like and what a more sustainable way to live might be.

Nancy Norbeck [00:05:30]:
Yeah. And also, it’s so fascinating to me how, you know, the original comment was you’re wasting your intellect, but it’s rooted in the capitalist society that you have to be able to make money, and making money is not necessarily something that requires an intellect. And so, you know, it’s it’s such an interesting dynamic underneath all of these things and often a frustrating dynamic. So what did you think you were gonna do with your degree when you first went?

Kate Powers [00:06:05]:
Well, I was clearly I was clearly gonna be running a a a a regional theater or a Shakespeare festival by the time I was 30, Nancy. That was obviously gonna happen.

Nancy Norbeck [00:06:19]:
Of course. So you were always, more interested in the the directing and administrative side, or did you wanna do the acting too?

Kate Powers [00:06:29]:
You know, I did some acting, in high school, and what I figured out, about the time that I was applying to colleges was, that these are 2 different skill sets, and I was gonna diffuse my focus if I tried to do both at the same time. And, so I I just just I chose to really lean into directing. And I I don’t know that if I could talk to my 18 year old self if I would tell her that that was maybe a limiting idea or a limiting misperception, but that was what I was cooking with at the time.

Nancy Norbeck [00:07:04]:
Interesting. Especially because you seem to have done such interesting things with it. So how did you, you know, you start out directing, and somehow you end up deciding that Shakespeare is gonna save the world. And, boy, am I right there with you. I love this. What happens in between? I think I decided Shakespeare was gonna save

Kate Powers [00:07:29]:
the world, and then I decided to be a director. But Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I you know, I’m I first met Shakespeare before anybody had told me that he was good for me, before I had this I before anybody could get to me with the idea that this was, like, this theatrical Kate brand that you have to choke down. Right? I just I saw my first production of Shakespeare play at the age of 8. I didn’t know what it was. I just loved it.

Kate Powers [00:07:57]:
I didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to understand it, so I just did. And I’m sure some of the jokes went sailing over my head, but that’s okay. Right? Mhmm. And so yeah. So then I went to drama school, and then I, I did what, you know, 100 of thousands I was like, oh, look. I’m a walking cliche. I did what 100 of thousands of people do. I just came to New York City, to, you know, start my career and sort of go, hey, New York.

Kate Powers [00:08:25]:
Aren’t you thrilled that I’m here? Oh, wait. New York does not care.

Nancy Norbeck [00:08:32]:
Yeah. New York is I love New York, but but yeah.

Kate Powers [00:08:36]:
You do.

Nancy Norbeck [00:08:36]:
It is rather impersonal that way.

Kate Powers [00:08:39]:
Yeah. Yeah. The professional theater, in New York City, I I, lovingly refer to as a bitch goddess. Yeah. Yeah. It’ll break your heart about 6 times a week. Wow. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:08:56]:
And yet, so many people

Kate Powers [00:08:59]:
are just

Nancy Norbeck [00:09:00]:
So many people. There for it.

Kate Powers [00:09:02]:
Yep. Yep. Because we aren’t having that conversation with them at the undergraduate level to say, hey. Guess what? Like, yes. That is one definition of success, and there might be about 36 others that you haven’t considered.

Nancy Norbeck [00:09:14]:
Yes. And I think the whole idea of what success looks like is one that we don’t talk about enough in general, regardless of what field you’re in. You know? I mean Yeah. You could be the world’s most successful CEO and be miserable. So is that really success?

Kate Powers [00:09:33]:
Right. Right. But in capitalism, right, again, it’s not it’s not a very comprehensive or holistic conversation about Right. What for you are the important components.

Nancy Norbeck [00:09:43]:
Right? Yeah. Yeah. We we overlook all of that, And then we wonder why people are miserable. So how did you decide that you wanted to do more with your theater background than just put on shows and have your own theater company?

Kate Powers [00:10:06]:
Yeah. I mean, I I went gosh. Like 17 or 18 years ago, I went to a conference, which is the Shakespeare Theatre Association Conference, which is mostly comprised of people who are, in leadership roles at Shakespeare Theatres, principally in the United States and in Canada, but also the UK and now much more international than it was even then. Right? And I was sort of elbowing my way in, my pointy, freelancer elbows. I thought, can I come and participate in this? And, one of the people that I met at that very first conference, is a guy named Kurt Toffland. At the time, Kurt was the artistic director of Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, and he also ran a program that he had founded called Shakespeare Behind Bars. And there’s actually a great documentary on Netflix called Shakespeare Behind Bars. So if anybody wants to sort of dive into the rabbit hole of this work, I recommend that documentary.

Kate Powers [00:11:09]:
But, Kurt was filled with all these stories about the work that he had done with the men, the kinds of transformations that people were experiencing through making theater in a maximum security or a medium security environment. And I thought, I think I have to do that. And he said, now you have to be very thoughtful about how you enter into this work because the emptiness that will be there after you leave will be so much greater than the whole that was there before you arrived. You can’t just sort of parachute in for 6 months. You need to make a commitment. And I thought, well, I’m a freelance director. I don’t know where I’m gonna be next Thursday, much less 5 years from now. And so I held off.

Kate Powers [00:11:57]:
I hesitated a little bit because I was taking him very seriously about that. And then eventually, I, you know, I I would see him each year, and he would tell me some new stories. And, I just really felt like this was something I needed to do, and I found this program, that was founded by Catherine Volkins, and some men who were incarcerated at Sing Sing Correctional Facility called Rehabilitation Through the Arts. And I reached out to Katherine and kinda jumped into the deep end of the pool, and that was 15 years ago. Wow. So yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:12:32]:
I’ve heard that, you know, because, like, there’s a I’m close to Princeton University, and there’s a prison teaching project there. And I’ve I’ve heard from people who’ve been involved in things like that about, like, the restrictions on what you can bring in with you, you know, like, things that most of us wouldn’t or even think about.

Kate Powers [00:12:51]:
Mhmm.

Nancy Norbeck [00:12:51]:
How how did you, you know, how how did your actual experience when you first walked in differ from what you expected, or were you pretty pretty solidly prepared?

Kate Powers [00:13:05]:
You know, it’s interesting. I always, say about the first night that I went in there, that I forgot to be afraid, because I was just so excited to get to work. And, my Catherine, very wisely, would pair anybody who was a new teaching artist coming in, with somebody who’d been doing the work for a while. Right? And so the the the brief initially was just go and be a presence in the room. Let the men get to know you a little bit. Right? Let them suss you out. Okay. Fine.

Kate Powers [00:13:38]:
So so I go in on that first night, and, I’m assisting a guy, named Jeff Blazer, who’s out in LA now. Jeff is just getting underway. Jeff’s starting to rehearse a play that he’s directing with the men. And he I think I was in there about 15 minutes before Jeff turns to me and says, would you mind to read this scene with somebody? And I said, sure. Right? So, I jump in and and the the incarcerated actor and I are sitting sort of knee to knee facing each other and all the rest of the men are around us in a circle. And we read the scene, and the scene is it’s a it’s a play that the men have written during a protracted, kind of, like Kate month writing process and then, you know, various writing prompts and then slowly distilling down into a dramatic piece. Right? So it’s this ensemble piece which is really looking at like what happens to your, relationships when you’re serving a long sentence. Right? And from as many different perspectives as possible.

Kate Powers [00:14:36]:
So anyway, so this particular scene is about, a visit between a husband and a wife, and the communication has started to break down between them. And, so we read the scene once, and then Jeff is trying to coach the actor, whose whose nickname, was Knowledge. Right? So he’s trying to coach knowledge, and give him a few prompts, and at one point he says to knowledge, so, what do you wanna do to get her to, you know, behave the way you want her to behave? Meaning, the characters. Right? Mhmm. And knowledge I think because looking back on this now, knowing knowledge the way that I got to know him over time, I think he was nervous that night because there’s 30 guys in the circle watching him with the brand new woman in the room. Right? Right. So knowledge makes a joke, and he makes

Nancy Norbeck [00:15:19]:
the worst choke he can make. He goes, well, I don’t know. Can I choke her?

Kate Powers [00:15:23]:
And I didn’t miss a beat, Nancy. I just said, you go ahead and try Mike Tyson. I can take you. And, apparently, I was the talk of the cell block that that night because I wasn’t afraid, and I sort of met his joke with sort of equal energy, and we just did the work. I treated them like people and because they’re people. Because the people we incarcerate are people.

Nancy Norbeck [00:15:49]:
Yes.

Kate Powers [00:15:50]:
Right? They’re not all these horrific attributes that we None of us is just the worst thing we ever did. Do you know? Yes. If I was only If I had to, every time I introduce myself, tell everyone the worst thing I ever did. Right. Right? We don’t have to do that. Right. But we ask these men who for whom many of them, every system, every structure failed them long before they ended up in prison. Right? Like Mhmm.

Kate Powers [00:16:25]:
Teachers failed them and school systems and, social workers and, you know, city, municipal, sort of kinds of structures of support weren’t there. All of those things, Right? No child left behind, God help us. Right? Left so many children behind. Right? So so many things, racism, systemic racism, all these things, which isn’t to excuse or mitigate crimes that people committed, but to put context around them. Right. Like, we should really be having a much more complicated conversation about all these things. But as a society, we’re not great at that. Right? We want these very reductive little sound bites.

Kate Powers [00:17:11]:
We want everything to

Nancy Norbeck [00:17:12]:
be simple and black and white.

Kate Powers [00:17:13]:
Yeah. But, sorry. That’s my soapbox over there. That’s fine. But I just checked

Nancy Norbeck [00:17:20]:
on. You’re not wrong.

Kate Powers [00:17:21]:
Yeah. But one of the things we see in a carceral space, you know, the the recidivism rate nationally is about 68%. Right? It varies state by state. In New York Kate, it’s like 55%, Minnesota, it’s a little under 50%, but regardless, that means that half or more than half of the folks that we incarcerate, upon their release from prison are back in crime for a new back in prison for a new crime or a parole violation within 2 years. So we’re not doing great by folks.

Nancy Norbeck [00:17:55]:
Right.

Kate Powers [00:17:55]:
And and some folks may say, oh, well, clearly those are career criminals. But the other more complicated answer is we’re also not giving them the tools to come home and reenter. Right? If if you wanna teach somebody how to be a career criminal, the best place for them to spend some time is inside a prison. But men who participate in prison theater programs in this country, the recidivism rate is less than 5%.

Nancy Norbeck [00:18:23]:
That’s fantastic and I’m surprised and not surprised all at the same time.

Kate Powers [00:18:27]:
Right? Mhmm. Because, you get to practice being in relationship with other human beings. You get to, in some ways, you know, the mirror neurons get to fire in the brain. You get to sometimes play a role that gives you critical distance on whatever your experience was or maybe your crime was or your childhood trauma was, and you can explore and start to imagine alternative outcomes, it’s critical thinking, it’s vocabulary building, it’s being in relationship, it’s delayed gratification, it’s problem solving. Oh, well, we’re just just, big air quotes, telling a story, making a play. And Shakespeare turns out to be super good for that. I mean, we do at Sing Sing, we do all kinds of material, but, one of the things that Shakespeare specifically is great for is that he over and over again, shows us, the full range of what it means to be human.

Nancy Norbeck [00:19:23]:
Mhmm.

Kate Powers [00:19:24]:
Right? From the most exalted to the most base and vile, from the violent to the lover to the ridiculous. Right? He shows us the whole range. And also there’s no whatever in Shakespeare. Right? Like, there’s no, meh. Yeah. That’s fine. Like, whatever people feel in a Shakespeare play, they feel it with their whole person. Right? Their whole heart, their whole soul.

Kate Powers [00:19:47]:
And so, the invitation over and over again is to lean into that. And it turns out to help people figure out who they wanna be, and how they wanna live, and what kind of actions they wanna take, and how they wanna come home.

Nancy Norbeck [00:20:06]:
Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s almost a cliche that Shakespeare is, you know, the first and foremost expert on human nature ever, but it’s a cliche for a really good reason.

Kate Powers [00:20:16]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I will also say, right, he’s super problematic. Like bless him. You know, I have a master’s degree in Shakespeare. I’ve spent most of my life with him. He’s super problematic. Right? He is a little bit racist.

Kate Powers [00:20:28]:
He’s a little bit sexist. But we can also look at those things and have a conversation about them in the room and make a decision about how do we wanna engage with that piece of the material or that component of the story. And where do we see those? Because also, real talk, racism and sexism are, you know, galloping about the world.

Nancy Norbeck [00:20:48]:
So Yeah. They haven’t gone anywhere.

Kate Powers [00:20:50]:
They haven’t gone anywhere. And and in a man’s maximum security facility, they’re hunkered down tight. Right? So how do we how do we explore those things through the story rather than pretending they’re not there or just cutting them out of the play and going, oh, see? Everything’s fine.

Nancy Norbeck [00:21:07]:
Right.

Kate Powers [00:21:08]:
But but he sitting with that complexity. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:21:10]:
Yeah. So how do the folks you’re working with respond to things like that? Do they tend to notice them on their own, or do you bring them up, or is it some of each?

Kate Powers [00:21:20]:
I would say it’s a little bit of both. So I just did a workshop last summer at Sing Sing, and we were just reading some plays. Right? Because we were locked out for a long time during the pandemic, and so we were just starting to get back in and, reacclimate with one another. Right? And so this workshop last summer was really just to read some plays together to start to think about, like, what might we wanna do for a production as we, you know, get back up to full speed and so on. And, so we’re reading, one of the plays the men wanted to read was Death of the Salesman. And at one point, one of the men said, Kate, is this a white family or a black family? And I said,

Nancy Norbeck [00:22:04]:
well, I don’t know. What do

Kate Powers [00:22:05]:
you think? And so we discussed a little bit. And then somebody said one of the men said, well, he just called somebody an ignoramus, and only white people use that word. So, you know, so they they’re they’re and then we talked about the fact that, you know, there was a production coming to Broadway this fall this past fall. Right? That was sort of the African the African American Lohmann family at the center of the narrative. It wasn’t an it wasn’t an all African American telling, but they really they use that play as a way to explore, some of the systemic injustices and inequities and, the kind of racism that Willie Lohman would have experienced had he been a black man.

Nancy Norbeck [00:22:54]:
Mhmm.

Kate Powers [00:22:54]:
Right? And I actually did salesman, at Fishkill Correctional Facility, gosh, like, 10 years ago now, I think. And 1 and it when the men wanted to do it, I’ll be honest with you, Nancy, I died a tiny little death the night that they asked me to do it because I was like, oh, I’m so sick of death in Salesman. I I don’t know how many times I had to watch the film of Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich while I was in drama school and everything else. Right? So I was like, ugh. But one thing that I found working on it with the men at Fishkill was that it resonates very differently in there than it does on the outside. And it it the play sort of did different things and was talking about different different things.

Nancy Norbeck [00:23:36]:
And, again, sort of coming

Kate Powers [00:23:37]:
back to that question of, like, what does success mean for you? And are you letting someone else, or are you letting society write your definition of success for you? Mhmm. And what happens if you say, like, Biff, also the son, Biff, and salesman ultimately comes to say to his father, you and I are a dime a dozen, pop, and we’re never gonna make it this way. But I’m good with my hands, and I like to be out in the open air. So that’s what I’m gonna go do. But you have to stop expecting that I’m gonna come back and get on the business ladder.

Nancy Norbeck [00:24:15]:
Because it’s

Kate Powers [00:24:16]:
not who I am. Right? And for those men in that incarcerated space to invite the question of what does your version of success look like? What does coming home and being successful mean for each of the people in this circle? And just inviting them to have that conversation over an extended period of time together. Right? So that they weren’t just kind of by rote going, oh, yeah. Well, I’m gonna get a job. I’m gonna make a lot of money. But how do I want to come home? How do I want to reenter? How do I wanna engage and connect?

Nancy Norbeck [00:24:51]:
What kind of conclusions did they come to?

Kate Powers [00:24:54]:
Pick 1. Every I mean, amongst the group, somebody felt every every single thing you could imagine. Right? So a couple of those men, have come home and have gotten kind of corporate jobs. Right? And are doing that. Most of them are in service jobs. Those men who are who are home, either working for nonprofit organizations that are about giving back in some way. One of them founded a program that is working specifically with Kate, tweens, you know, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th grade kids who, come from sort of historically defunded communities and who are most likely to get swept into that school to prison pipeline, but they haven’t been systems impacted yet. And so he’s grabbing them up and he’s got this like wrap around of after school services for them.

Kate Powers [00:25:44]:
So there’s food, there’s sports, there’s theater, there’s painting and other visual arts, so that they can each each kid can jump into whatever part speaks to them. And his hope is, you know, that he can keep them out of the system, the Kate, 25 years of his life.

Nancy Norbeck [00:26:05]:
Right. And, you know, I mean, he’s got the perfect background to know exactly what is likely to help, which is fantastic.

Kate Powers [00:26:14]:
He’s a super credible messenger. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Wow. So,

Nancy Norbeck [00:26:21]:
when you first walk into a space like that and say, we’re gonna do Shakespeare.

Kate Powers [00:26:32]:
Yes.

Nancy Norbeck [00:26:33]:
I I’m trying to imagine the kind of reactions you must get.

Kate Powers [00:26:37]:
Mhmm. Mhmm. Yep. So I started a new program in 2017 at a new facility, And I went, to the facility, like, 6 or 8 weeks before the workshop was gonna begin. And the idea was to introduce myself, sort of introduce the program, and see if I could drum up any interest. Right? So I came in and about 30 guys had signed up to come hear what I was, you know, proposing. And I invited them, to rearrange the chairs. The chairs were all set up in these very strict rows, when I got there.

Kate Powers [00:27:17]:
And so I immediately invited everyone to create some, furniture chaos in the room by moving everything into a big circle so we could all see each other. Right? And I had a clip from a video of 2 of the men at Sing Sing talking about working on a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that we did in 2016 and what they got out of it. Right? It was a local news story at the time. So I brought that so that they could hear directly from their peers about what the value was. I invited them to play a couple games with me, and I remember one of the men was a few minutes late getting there. He got detained at work or on his shift or something. And so he he sort of burst into the room and he shouted, forsooth, as he kind of banged the door open. Right? But so we played some games, and, I remember there was there’s one kind of circle activity that we were trying to play, and it was it’s it’s like a breath and eye contact and movement that you’re sort of mirroring the movement and then it’s traveling from you know, you and I Kate eye contact, take a breath together, we’re gonna do the movement, then you’re gonna turn to the person on the other side of you, and it’s gonna slowly travel around the circle.

Kate Powers [00:28:32]:
And ideally, after you do that a couple times, it starts to pick up a little tempo and a little bit of pace. Right? And we’d get about halfway around the circle, and there was a gentleman over there. Every time it got to him, he would get completely flustered. He he couldn’t make the eye contact with the person. He couldn’t take the breath. The whole rhythm of the whole circle would kinda go right? It would just fall apart. I don’t know how that’s gonna sound on a podcast, but, but it just, you know, fizzled out, and then the people next to him would sort of pick it back up, and then the rhythm would start to and the speed would start to and it would come around the circle, and then it would get to him and fall apart one more more time. Right? And I thought to myself, I’m never gonna see that man again.

Kate Powers [00:29:09]:
He can’t wait to get out of this room. I’m torturing this poor man. But he came, and he literally never missed a session. And, he became sort of the poster child, ultimately, for the whole project. His name was Bob, and we used to joke, that his face should appear on milk cartons, by about halfway through the first workshop because he said, people are starting to wonder what happened to the old Bob.

Nancy Norbeck [00:29:34]:
Oh.

Kate Powers [00:29:35]:
Bob has vanished. And he said, my wife has said that Powers visits are different. And so and and then he ended up working on a soliloquy from Hamlet, at a certain point. So and another one of the men in that circle initially, he was like, well, Shakespeare, why doesn’t he just why doesn’t he just say what he means?

Nancy Norbeck [00:30:00]:
Question of high school students everywhere.

Kate Powers [00:30:02]:
Right? Why doesn’t he just say what he means? But what was really lovely was we I I started with those gentlemen in that facility. There’s a speech at the beginning of Henry the 5th, which a lot of people might be a little bit familiar with, which starts, oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention. Right? And it’s about a 30 line, speech and it’s really kind of setting up the action of the play. But part of what I like about doing that piece at the beginning is it sort of tells us what theater is and also what theater is not. Because in the course of that play or course of that speech, the guy says, think when we talk of horses that you see them. Right? Imagine if within and he says this wouldn’t owe, right? Meaning the Kate. Imagine if within this wouldn’t owe, we could have these armies, Right? When you see 1, imagine that you see a 100. And so he’s saying, audience, we cannot do this without you.

Kate Powers [00:30:59]:
Right? And so for for a population of folks who some of whom have never been to a play before, it’s a great way to get into the language and and to start to imagine what the possibilities are or what we can make together. Right? So, I had given each of them each the men were in small groups of 2 or 3 folks, and I gave each group a set of cards with all the words that were in one line of that speech. Right? So one group got o for a musifier that would assent, but not necessarily in that order, like just a pile of words, each word was on its own card. And I said, put those in the order that you think they go in. Right? And, and then once they all each group thought they had an order that they liked, I said, great. Now figure out, like, is one person gonna speak, or are all 3 of you gonna speak? Or is everyone gonna say this one word together? How do you wanna present it? And and what’s a movement that goes with the order that you found? Right? So and we did that a few times. Right? Whatever order they Powers. And then I gave them the order in which the words actually appear in the speech.

Kate Powers [00:32:02]:
Right? And so now they played with their physicality and their vocal energy and stuff a couple of times, and then we went around the circle and each group had had their words in the right order, and so we went from the first line to the second line to the third line and so on around the room. And we went all the way around the room, and then there was this moment where nobody spoke, and it was almost as if nobody took a breath because they suddenly saw the possibility and they understood what had just happened. And then one of the men said, can we do that again right away? And so we did. Right? And that was that was the 3rd week of the workshop. Right? So we’re, like, 6 hours in, and now Shakespeare belongs to them. Yeah. And then what happens is, once Shakespeare belongs to you, once you can, like, kick his butt to the curb and back again because you understand what he’s doing, then one’s relationship to all of world culture can shift. Because he comes down off of that pedestal, right, and he comes out of the church of Shakespeare, and he comes to the Shakespeare block party.

Kate Powers [00:33:09]:
And if you’re somebody who has been told by every guidance counselor and every teacher and every social worker that you’re stupid, that you’re a thug, that you’re a monster, that you’re an animal, that you’re garbage your whole life, but now you own Shakespeare’s behind.

Nancy Norbeck [00:33:23]:
Yeah.

Kate Powers [00:33:24]:
Maybe you’re not as stupid as all those people told you you were. Right. So the confidence, the self esteem, the literacy skills, the critical thinking, just like fireworks.

Nancy Norbeck [00:33:37]:
I’m, like, sitting here with goosebumps. This is amazing.

Kate Powers [00:33:40]:
It’s, like, such a privilege to be in the room when that happens. And so the guy who Kate the first session was like, why why doesn’t Shakespeare just say what he means? By halfway through that first workshop, he’s sitting in the front row while people are working on their pieces, making these, like, proud uncle sounds at them while they’re they’re like, uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Nancy Norbeck [00:33:57]:
You can do it. Yeah. You tell oh, you tell it. Right? And then he says

Kate Powers [00:34:00]:
at one point, we’re looking at a scene from Othello, between Iago and his wife, Emilia, who he treats like crap. Right? And we’ve just read it once through, and this guy, Monty says, well, you know, I can see that he doesn’t really love her, but she has grown through her pain. It’s like 6 weeks into the first workshop, and I said, could you wait a little bit longer before you don’t need me at all?

Nancy Norbeck [00:34:29]:
Oh, that is amazing and awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can see how you would just never get tired of it.

Kate Powers [00:34:38]:
Never gets old. Never gets old.

Nancy Norbeck [00:34:41]:
Just hearing about it, I can feel that there’s just so much magic in that in its way. You know? It’s it’s doing so many amazing things. It’s no wonder that Bob was not the old Bob anymore.

Kate Powers [00:34:53]:
The old Bob. Yeah. You know, the other thing is, men start to like, so other guys in the yard start to see the difference. Right? And start to look up to the guys who are in the theater group a little bit. Well, I wanna, I don’t know what’s happening to him, but I kinda want a piece of that.

Nancy Norbeck [00:35:13]:
So does it I mean, do do you end up with almost, like, more interest than you can handle as a result?

Kate Powers [00:35:19]:
Absolutely. Yeah. At Sing Sing, the waiting list is a few years long to get into the theater group.

Nancy Norbeck [00:35:28]:
Wow. Wow. And I’m assuming that when you have your actual performances, it’s for the other folks that are there. It’s not like their friends and family can likely get in, I’m guessing.

Kate Powers [00:35:37]:
So, before the pandemic, we haven’t we’re we’re we’re still working our way back. Right? But before the pandemic, what it looked like was we would perform the play, three times. So on a Wednesday night and a Thursday night, we would perform it for the population of the facility. Right? So that might be as many as 300 men a night, might come down and see it. It’s not everybody’s jam, and that’s okay. Right? So not everybody comes, but usually 5 or 600 men out of 1800 at the facility would come

Nancy Norbeck [00:36:07]:
and see it.

Kate Powers [00:36:07]:
Not bad. And and then on the Friday night, we would perform for an invited audience of civilians. Kate. And, usually the day that the tickets are available for civilians, like, the e the email might go out, say, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon one day, and by 4 o’clock, they’re gone. It is because we can only have about 275 people come Kate, and, because all those people have to get screened into the facility. Right? And so that’s extra correctional officers have to be on duty, so that’s overtime. Right? And also the space, just, the space that we can accommodate. Kate, for years, the families were not allowed to attend the performances that was deemed to be a security risk.

Kate Powers [00:36:54]:
So it Kate, I think about 16 or 17 years to persuade the Department of Corrections to let the families come. And so the 1st year that the families could come, the men said, well, then we want to do a show for our kids. So they did The Wizard of Oz. And those were some of the biggest munchkins I have ever seen, Nancy. But it was just it just it would have made your dog leap. It was so sweet. It was so beautiful. Right? And then, the real showstopper then, right, was at the end when Dorothy is clicking her heels and getting ready to go home

Nancy Norbeck [00:37:34]:
Oh, yeah.

Kate Powers [00:37:35]:
All the men came out into the audience, and they stood by their family person, and they all said there’s no place like home. And 2 of the men didn’t have any family coming that night, and so they had said to me beforehand, can you be our family? And I was like, well, yes. Right? So then they came and stood by me, and I was just they they still, to this day, will tease me about how hard I cried that night.

Nancy Norbeck [00:37:59]:
I bet I bet there wasn’t a dry eye in the whole place.

Kate Powers [00:38:02]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:38:06]:
And I’m sure that that everyone who comes in to see this is is just blown away and sees their folks in a very different light.

Kate Powers [00:38:17]:
So, you know, we one of the things that’s really lovely about that performance I mean, I think it’s the process is really important for the men in terms of, all those skills that we were talking about a little bit. But that those performances are important in their own way because in the in the sort of weird small town that is the interior of the prison, they start to become role models and people look up to them and they, like, they talk about those nights when they go back to the cell block, they feel like rock stars because people are, like, calling out lines of the play to them as they go back. Right? Or they’re, you know, When we did Powers Town, this one guy, who played editor Webb said that for weeks, people would say, yo yo. It’s Emily’s pops. It’s Emily’s pops. Every time he showed up anywhere in the facility. And, so there’s that piece. So but, with their they they talk about just being free.

Kate Powers [00:39:13]:
Right? That they feel like those nights they’re free. But then when the when the civilian audience comes in, so that’s maybe 20% of that audience is comprised of Department of Corrections, officials, and, you know, folks from Albany, and, other sort of mid level bureaucrats

Nancy Norbeck [00:39:36]:
and stuff like that. Right? So, part

Kate Powers [00:39:36]:
of part of political and legislative and governmental machine. Right? Mhmm. And then probably 25% of the audience is now their families. So their spouses, their parents, their children get to come. And for some of those families, they have never gotten an opportunity to, like, look up at their person Right. And feel proud. Right? And also see these government officials and these piles of, like, frankly, like progressive white people who comprise the rest of the audience. Right? People who are kind of excited about the work.

Kate Powers [00:40:04]:
But to see them get a standing ovation, to see them hold everybody’s attention wrapped for 2 hours, that is transformative for the men, that is transformative for their families. Right? And then, you know, for a lot of the folks who are coming in, it’s their first time inside a maximum security facility, and our society has a rhetoric about who it is that we lock up. Right? And so to come into that space and meet the men and watch their work and have a chance to chat with them a little bit, blows people’s minds right open in what I think is some of the most exciting and constructive ways.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:43]:
I’m sure.

Kate Powers [00:40:45]:
Inviting people to sort of trouble that pop culture idea of who it is we incarcerate.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:49]:
Yeah. Because as you say, they’re people.

Kate Powers [00:40:53]:
They’re people.

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:54]:
Yeah. So you mentioned the recidivism rate drops for folks who run the theater. Have have you had a chance to talk to people who’ve transitioned back into society about how they feel that being in that program helped them do that?

Kate Powers [00:41:15]:
Sure. Sure. All day long. Yes. Yeah. I mean, you know, it’s a it’s the ability to make eye contact in a job interview for one thing. Right? You know, every workshop I start inside, there’s always what I would call some elders in the circle. Right? Some some guys who’ve been involved in the program for a while.

Kate Powers [00:41:39]:
Right? And then there’s always some newbies. There’s always a guy who’s coming for the first time. And, sort of a double edged thing. Right? So on the one hand, a lot of the men won’t go to the GED program or the college program because they have learned that school is not for them. Right? Because of their lived experience of the way they were treated. Mhmm. They’re they’re not go to school. But they might come to the theater class because we’re jumping up and down, and we’re laughing a lot, and we’re it looks like we’re having a very silly good time.

Kate Powers [00:42:06]:
Mhmm. At the same time, those guys come into our room, and the first time we ask them to participate in whatever the silly game or activity, you know, which is about creating some focus and some shared energy in the room, Suddenly, that guy thrust his hands deep in his pockets and he’s staring at the floor and there’s nothing more fascinating than his shoes because he is terrified to look like a fool in front of the other men. Yeah. Right? So for some men, sometimes success is not running out of the room. Right? Just staying. Mhmm. Right? And so I my language is always I say and I get this from Kurt Tofflin to Shakespeare behind bars, it’s always an invitation, it’s never a demand. Right? So I invite you to play this game.

Kate Powers [00:42:52]:
You don’t wanna play the Kate? You wanna stand over there with your hands buried in your pockets? Okay. The game will be over here. Right? And usually one of the things that happens is the l the elders in the circle or the old heads, they’re jumping in. They’re having a great time because they are over that anxiety about looking foolish. And sooner or later, it becomes irresistible because it looks really fun. Mhmm. And so they jump in. Right? But success looks different for each man who comes into the room.

Kate Powers [00:43:20]:
Right? It might take some guys, like, half an hour. It might take some guys 6 weeks. As long as they keep coming in the room, I can work with that. Right. You know? But so, some some men, and, you know, Jim Gilligan is a psychologist who’s written a book called Violence, and he talks about how shame is at the root of so much violence in our society. And Charles Darwin has also talked about visiting American prisons at one point, and he talked about how so many people that he met couldn’t make eye contact with him. Right? And so I think the fact that we come in the teaching artists come in, and the first thing we do is we look people in the eye and we say hello, and I’m Kate, and it’s so great to meet you, which is maybe a phrase they have not heard

Nancy Norbeck [00:44:09]:
Mhmm.

Kate Powers [00:44:09]:
In however many years. Right? And I just keep making the invitation. Right? So I think people people learn how to be back in a relationship. There’s a guy who was one of the founding members the program at Sing Sing, who said, that when he, when the program first started, he said, I was not that interested in communication. He said, either you were my people or you weren’t my people. If you were my people, I was like, sup? If you weren’t my people, I was like, f you. Mhmm. And he said that was pretty much my range of communication.

Kate Powers [00:44:41]:
But then one night it rained, so he couldn’t go to the yard and lift weights. And one of his cellmates or, you know, somebody on his tier said, why don’t you come to the theater workshop? And so he came and he said, the way he tells the story is that he his hands were shaking so much that he could barely read the words of the script, because he suddenly was so nervous

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:01]:
Mhmm.

Kate Powers [00:45:02]:
To stand there. He said, but then a funny thing happened. He said, I learned to communicate, and then I got addicted to Kate. Right? So he’s been home now for almost 20 years, and he, he works with a nonprofit organization which is about in, getting getting members of opposing gangs and neighborhoods to work together on projects that build up their communities. So that’s where he went after being in the theater group. This guy who did not like to communicate.

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:32]:
Yeah. He’s communicating all day long.

Kate Powers [00:45:35]:
All day long. Wow. And passing it on.

Nancy Norbeck [00:45:39]:
Yeah. So I’m wondering, who pays for all of this?

Kate Powers [00:45:51]:
Yeah. This is not a get rich quick scheme. I do not recommend it. If you’re looking to, like, buy a bigger house, this is not the plan. So there’s not a lot of money to support this work in most parts of the country. The big exception is the Kate of California, which I think with a lot of social movements tends to just be way out ahead of the curve. So the Kate of California, funds through Shakespeare, Marin Shakespeare Company, and the Actors Gang in LA and the Old Globe in San Diego all have different prison performing arts programs, that are pretty well supported by, the Kate. Right? Well, but I should say, by a combination of the state and then, you know, some individual individual grants and then Powers.

Kate Powers [00:46:44]:
There aren’t that many foundations that have wanted to put money into this work. There’s a handful. A lot of these, programs have for a lot of years been real Powers of love, kind of shoestring operations. RTA, I would say, has just in the past, maybe like 5, 6 years kind of found a slightly firmer financial footing through some, really determined, development work by their team. But yeah, It’s a in general, across the country, it is not super well supported. And sometimes it’s 1 or 2 teaching artists who mostly don’t pay themselves. Mhmm. Because whatever money they raise, they’re putting into scripts and costumes and supplies for the folks in the program.

Nancy Norbeck [00:47:40]:
Well, if there’s a place where anybody who’s listening to this can drop a couple bucks if they feel so inclined because I can only speak for myself, but it certainly seems to me, like, we should be supporting exactly this sort of thing because it’s doing so much good in so many ways. Where would you send them?

Kate Powers [00:48:00]:
Sure. So I would probably send them directly to one of the organizations that’s doing the work. So in New York Kate, that’s rehabilitation through the arts. Their website is rta dash arts.org. I started a program, in the state of Minnesota, to continue doing this work because, nobody was doing that out there called the Redeeming Time Project. And so you can Google redeeming time, and throw some money that way. There’s also, as I say, there’s Shakespeare San Quentin through Marin Shakespeare. There’s, Prison Performing Arts is in Michigan.

Kate Powers [00:48:38]:
Kentucky Shakespeare does Shakespeare Behind Bars. So, yeah, there’s a handful of organizations out there. There’s one in the Pacific Northwest called Open Hearts Open Minds. Any of them would be happy to take somebody’s $25 and put it to give word.

Nancy Norbeck [00:48:55]:
I’m I’m hoping that people who hear this will do that because I think that, like I said, I mean, I feel like there’s so much bang for your buck. Right? There’s so much that is coming out of this that’s so incredible and so positive.

Kate Powers [00:49:12]:
Well, yeah. And, you know, I I bet about once a week, I have somebody say something to me to the effect of why do these murderers get free Shakespeare? And Yeah. Right. But but part of the answer is who do you want coming home? Right. Because do you want a guy who’s been parked in a box of his own bitterness and hurt and anger for 25 years? Like how has that been serving us as a country? Right.

Nancy Norbeck [00:49:37]:
Or do

Kate Powers [00:49:37]:
you want a guy who had an opportunity to say, Hang on, I don’t want to be that guy anymore, but I’m not sure how to pivot. Oh, Kate, here’s this program that can help me practice being in relationship with other humans and develop all these skills, these life skills that I can bring home so that I can give back. Right? Like, it’s not just about the individual men in the program, it’s about communities they come home to.

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:05]:
Right. And yet the question is also rooted in the idea that we’re not talking about actual people.

Kate Powers [00:50:12]:
Correct. Correct. Yeah. I’m here to tell you they’re people. Some of the most I will say some of the most extraordinary human beings I have ever met

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:21]:
I bet.

Kate Powers [00:50:22]:
Are people I have met behind the walls. And I’m so grateful, like And I tell them all the time, and they scoff at me, but it is completely true that I learn more from them than I could possibly offer them.

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:36]:
Mhmm. Yeah. And they scoff at it because they’ve probably started to believe that they aren’t people too. Right. Yeah.

Kate Powers [00:50:45]:
It’s real it it’s it’s very hard not to internalize that message if you get

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:49]:
Yeah.

Kate Powers [00:50:50]:
Hit over the head with it as that much, you know.

Nancy Norbeck [00:50:55]:
Well, before we run out of time, I was looking at your website, and I saw a post that was about 10 years old called Law and Order Denmark. Okay. And and it was basically Hamlet as a court case.

Kate Powers [00:51:14]:
Right. Yes. Right. Right. Right.

Nancy Norbeck [00:51:15]:
Okay. And I just thought that this was such a brilliant idea, and I was hoping that you could tell everybody about it.

Kate Powers [00:51:22]:
Sure. So we were doing a hamlet workshop at Sing Sing, and one of the one of the things I was really concerned is that I didn’t wanna I didn’t wanna send people running for the hills. So, at least initially, we gave them a scene a week. Right? I didn’t wanna give them these huge tomes that might scare people away. So we just initially, we just had the the very first scene, and then the second week, it was like, here’s scene 2. Right? And then once we once everybody was kinda hooked, then it was like, okay. Here’s your book. Right? But at one point, we decided to put, Claudius the King on trial, and sort of do an improvisational trial.

Kate Powers [00:52:02]:
And so we we appointed folks to be, the prosecution team that was gonna try Claudius for the murder of the dead King Hamlet. And we were gonna have his defense team, and we we picked someone to be the judge who was gonna oversee the case, and then a jury. And in this Kate, quite literally, a jury of Claudius’ peers because all 4 of the men who comprise the jury as for this exercise were guys who also had murder convictions. And, I thought we were gonna do this for, like, 15 minutes, but the men loved being in charge of the courtroom

Nancy Norbeck [00:52:43]:
Mhmm.

Kate Powers [00:52:43]:
And that opportunity to explore. And at one point, they put, the actor the the incarcerated actor who was playing Horatio, Hamlet’s best friend. They put him on the stand, and, this is a guy who had been on point all the way through the workshop. He’d been really focused. He, had had some really great insights, and the the, prosecution started to question him, and, they were trying to get him to sort of say, oh, Hamlet’s crazy. Right? We shouldn’t listen to what he has to say. And so that they proposed a question to him about, well, isn’t it true that, you know, you know, Hamlet thinks he sees ghosts or something like that? And he said, nope. Nope.

Kate Powers [00:53:23]:
Nope. And I was like, wait a minute. I know he knows. Right? And so I sort of playfully said, listen. As the magistrate on behalf of mister Shakespeare, I need to have a word with, the witness. And so I went up to him, and I said I said, what’s going on? And he said, but I promised Hamlet. I swore I wouldn’t tell. And I was like, you are 9 steps ahead of me, my friend.

Kate Powers [00:53:46]:
Yeah. But I think that opportunity again, you know, sort of that critical distance on what was an incredibly traumatic experience for everybody in that room being on trial. Right? And so they got this opportunity through, sort of playing with these characters in Shakespeare to really tease out and imagine some different pathways forward for themselves.

Nancy Norbeck [00:54:09]:
And it’s it’s such an unusual way to approach Hamlet, but it sounds like it was a fun way to, you know, kind of be making your case based on actual material out of the play. So it’s it’s a fun role play on its own, but it’s also a chance to, like, show off how much you know and how much you understood what’s going on in this play in a really cool way.

Kate Powers [00:54:34]:
And it’s text analysis and it’s critical thinking skills. Yeah. Right? And what if we taught Hamlet like that in high schools?

Nancy Norbeck [00:54:40]:
I was just thinking, I hope that there’s a high school teacher listening who says, I’m gonna do this in my class. Yeah. You know?

Kate Powers [00:54:47]:
Yeah. We also, when we were working on Hamlet, we did, auditions for the ghost. You know? So each person in the room got to imagine what they thought that ghost might look like, how they might move, what they might sound like. You know, I think I think everybody should. Nobody nobody should get introduced to Shakespeare by sitting at a desk, head down, just like mumbling through it. Everybody should be invited to get up on their feet and then and play with the text. Shakespeare’s pretty resilient. He can take whatever we do to him and get over it.

Kate Powers [00:55:20]:
You know?

Nancy Norbeck [00:55:21]:
That’s true.

Kate Powers [00:55:22]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:55:22]:
I’ve been saying probably since I was in high school, you know, why why are we handing kids copies of these books and expecting them to go home and read it like it’s a newspaper article or an article? It’s not. It’s meant to be seen, and we make them read it first and try to imagine it all in their heads when there’s not a whole lot to really help a young modern audience figure out what this is supposed to look like. And, you know, you wouldn’t send a a class of high school kids home with a copy of a Beethoven score and say, read this tonight and we’ll talk about it tomorrow. You would never ever do that.

Kate Powers [00:55:58]:
Right? And the other thing I think, you know, in terms of, like, middle school and high school kids is some kids are gonna wanna jump up and read and play characters. Great. There’s other kids who are not gonna that is not gonna be their jam. Right. So great. They they can be on the dramaturgy team. They can be manning the dictionary, looking up words that we don’t understand, and they can become sort of that source of knowledge in the room. Other kids can start to think about, like, well, what music do we wanna have playing underneath this? Like, what what’s the what’s the musical interpretation of this moment? Somebody else can be thinking about what the costumes might look like or what the set might look like.

Kate Powers [00:56:28]:
What do we need to have on stage? So not a you don’t have to force the kid who doesn’t wanna get up and read to get up and read. There’s

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:34]:
Right. There’s a

Kate Powers [00:56:34]:
point of entry for every kid’s interest into how do we tell this story in the most exciting way. What makes this more dramatically compelling? And I know there are men that I’ve worked with, in maximum security who have said, if there had been a program like this in my junior high, I would never have ended up here. Mhmm.

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:56]:
Yeah. I believe that.

Kate Powers [00:56:59]:
So, yeah. Call make sure that the arts are being taught in your schools.

Nancy Norbeck [00:57:05]:
And and taught well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Kate Powers [00:57:12]:
Because it could quite literally save someone’s life. Yes. Well,

Nancy Norbeck [00:57:17]:
I am so glad that our paths crossed online. Yeah. Because I had a feeling that this would be an interesting conversation. I I was not expecting the goosebumps. Those were a bonus. But

Kate Powers [00:57:28]:
Glad to be of service.

Nancy Norbeck [00:57:29]:
I am so glad and that, you know, you found the time to come and talk to me today because I think that what you’re doing is phenomenal, and I think it’s gonna give people a lot to think about when they’re listening to this conversation. And I hope that they drop some money toward the folks who are doing this because, come on, obviously, is only to the good. It’s an investment in everybody’s future.

Kate Powers [00:57:53]:
Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for the invitation, Nancy. I appreciate it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:57:57]:
You’re very welcome. That’s this week’s episode. I am so grateful to Kate Powers for sharing her work with us and to you for listening. I really hope you’ll share this episode with a friend and leave a review. There’s a link right in your podcast app that tells us about a time when someone’s belief in you changed your life. And please don’t forget that folks who are doing this work need our financial support. Thanks. If this episode resonated with you, don’t forget to get in touch on any of my social platforms or even via email at nancy@fy curiosity.com.

Nancy Norbeck [00:58:33]:
Tell me what you loved. And if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, and you haven’t yet signed up for my free email series on 6 of the most common creative beliefs that are messing you up, please check it out. It’ll untangle those myths and help you get rolling again. You can find it at fycuriosity.com, and there’s also a link right in your podcast app. See you there, and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends.

Nancy Norbeck [00:59:14]:
It really helps me reach new listeners. Thanks.