This article is from the EMU News Archive. Current EMU new is available at www.emu.edu/news

Play Takes Intense Look at Crime Victims

Howard Zehr, co-director of EMU's Conflict Transformation Program and author of the book upon which the play, "A Body in Motion," is based, talks with an inmate at one of the Pennsylvania prisons where a performance was given.
Photo by Sarah Bones

A play evoking the agony experienced by victims of violence is hitting people hard on both sides of prison walls.

"I've read about how victims feel and I've been through counseling," one Pennsylvania prisoner told actors after they performed "A Body in Motion" at his medium-security state prison. "But this is the first time I've really felt it. This is the first time I felt the rage. This is the first time I've stopped thinking about my own victimhood."

"A Body in Motion" is based on the book "Transcending: Reflections of Crime Victims" (Good Books, 2001) by Howard Zehr, co-director of EMU's Conflict Transformation Program.

Three of the five principals involved in the play - the director and two of the actors, Trent Wagler and Lisa White - are EMU alumni, as is Barb Toews, the Pennsylvania Prison Society official who marshaled the resources necessary for the play to tour through eight Pennsylvania prisons in late April and May.

Playwright and director Ingrid DeSanctis pieced together a touching, often wrenching, play from the 39 profiles in Dr. Zehr’s book. Ms. DeSanctis, a former theater professor at EMU, drew upon Zehr’s book to highlight the courage of the people in it and the strength they developed to get through their experiences.

"With the institutionalized community, I desperately hope it allows them to see the true impact of their actions and take responsibility so that it won't occur again," DeSanctis said. "With the outside world, I would want [people] to recognize what the human spirit goes through, that you're not over it just because you go back to work a month later."

Ingrid DeSanctis (extreme right), talks with "A Body in Motion" cast members (l. to r.) Trent Wagler, Elizabeth King, Lisa White (seated) and Allison Glenzer prior to a performance, which sparked inward reflection for many of the prison inmates in the audience.
Photo by Sarah Bones

"A Body In Motion" features four actors on a sparsely furnished stage who take turns assuming roles, singing snippets of spirituals, and musing aloud. The bereaved mother feels betrayed by God and is thus unable to return to church or pray. The husband and wife head toward divorce because they don't grieve in the same way or at the same times for their slain child. For years, the raped jogger cannot rid herself of the itch she acquired after dragging herself, undressed, through poison ivy to seek help.

Sponsors of prison performances, including the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, said they believed seeing "A Body in Motion" would prompt inmates to reflect on damage they'd inflicted and to develop empathy for their victims and victims' families.

By this criteria, the play was a success, according to the verbal and written comments of prisoners following a performance at Rockview state correctional institution in central Pennsylvania.

Several prisoners spoke out loud of being rapists; one called himself a child molester. Said one man who looked over age 50: "If I could, I would like to talk to the runner [a rape victim in the play], but I know I don't have the right. I myself am a rapist ... I had a torturing sense of guilt while watching the play."

Two guards mentioned that they had never before heard prisoners openly admit to committing a sex crime, since it tends to relegate them to the lowest point on the prison pecking order.

Several men tried to articulate the strange experience of simultaneously feeling guilt over the way they have hurt others, while feeling grief over being victims themselves. A half-dozen prisoners noted that they suffered abuse as children and have lost family members to violence.

Cast member Trent Wagler speaks with a Pennsylvania prison inmate. Many audience members spoke of a new-found awareness of crimes and victims.
Photo by Sarah Bones

Of the 22 people who turned in evaluations, eight checked "yes" to the statement that the play made them care more for the victims of crime than they thought they would.

"I was hurt with those who hurted. I was in all ways the mood of the victims' pain, hurt, anger, confusion, etc." wrote one inmate. "I wish more people could see this play because maybe it would stop some of the crimes that happen to people."

In his "Little Book of Restorative Justice" (Good Books, 2002), Zehr holds that restorative justice necessarily revolves around "victim needs and offender responsibility for repairing harm." But offenders can't take responsibility without full awareness of the harm done, a primary thesis of the play.

Outside of eight Pennsylvania penitentiaries, "A Body in Motion" has been performed in about a dozen venues, including twice at EMU during the 2003-2004 school year. The prison performances were an experiment, says Zehr, who attended two of them and found that the positive reactions of prisoners exceeded his expectations.

These performances were made possible by a grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. Ms. Toews, restorative justice program manager of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, worked cooperatively with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, the state Office of the Victim Advocate and Episcopal Community Services to enable the May tour of the play.

More information on the play and public performances is available by contacting Ingrid DeSanctis at or at 540-560-6626.

— article by: Jim Bishop; posted May 20, 2004