garrettpalm

Today's show is devoted to just one story. Over the course of six months, reporter and This American Life contributor Jack Hitt followed a group of inmates in a high security prison, as they rehearsed and staged a production of the last act--Act V--of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Shakespeare may seem an odd match for a group of hardened criminals, but he found that they understand the bard on a level most of us might not. It's a play about murder and its consequences, performed by murderers, living out the consequences.