After our joint class today, I found myself reflecting on the notion of “re-education.” As a theatre major, I find it extremely that a large portion of the “academic” (for lack of a better word) structure in the camps was theatrical. For example, the prisoners would put on plays that they themselves wrote, always of course within the constraints of soviet political ideology.

In my own life experiences, theatre has been a means by which I access my education but not necessarily what I would consider to be my education in full form. I would imagine that these plays were opportunities for enormous emotional and psychological relief from the grueling lifestyle in these camps. However, it also appears to me that allowing (forcing?) prisoners to act out plays is ultimately the purest form of mental and political influence. Not only are you in prison for rejecting ideals, but you must now immerse yourself as completely in these political notions as possible. In short, you become the very thing you have been imprisoned for fighting against. I associate theatre with open mindedness and human progress, but I doubt that I would feel the same way if I learned about the deeper details concerning “Gulag theatre.”

“You are in jail for rejecting our ideals. Therefore, you have to understand them well enough to write about them, then organize them, then become them publicly.”