Knast

The prison in Tonna was better
you scream I scream we all scream for ice cream
the prison tolerates no deviation
the prison is detention, not an employer
the system works?

When entering prison, the inmate sheds their former everyday roles, leaves them together with their belongings in a locker, and enters a precisely timed system intended both to punish and to reform. When they come out—after months or years—they can retrieve their possessions; what has happened to their identity in the meantime only becomes apparent in life on the outside. Through imprisonment, the inmate passes through a period in which punishment, societal protection, entrenched mechanisms, psychological processing, and the tension with the outside world collide.

Deprivation of liberty as punishment, “doing time” in a place designed specifically for that purpose: what ideas of guilt and punishment underlie this? What role do societal images play, including after release? What does it actually look like behind the walls that lock people in and out—and is it the same everywhere in Germany? And who is behind bars? Where in prison are there actually bars, and how do people spend their day?

For the piece development “Knast” (“Prison”), the performers of Theaterhaus Jena play the theater group of JVA Hohenleuben, coached by the theater group of JVA Hohenleuben itself. But whom are they really playing: the inmates, criminals, the people they are—are they playing a cliché or cinematic images? The piece development is based on interviews with inmates of JVA Hohenleuben and draws on fragments of our cultural memory, for which prison serves as a projection surface like few other places.

The production was created in cooperation with JVA Hohenleuben and is performed at Theaterhaus Jena as well as at JVA Hohenleuben.
Premiere: March 3, 2023
Running time: 90 min

Thanks to Florian Reister as well as to the prisoners and staff of JVA Hohenleuben, especially Mr. Frank (Director), Ms. Hartmann (Officer for Sports and Recreation), Ms. Sander (Psychologist), and Armani, Christopher, Daniel, Enrico, Fabian, Felix, Joe, Michael, Ricardo, Sebastian, Selim, Tobias, among others (members of the theater group).