The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Sing Sing.

Mr. Maclin, I’d love to start with you. Can you tell us how you first learned about the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program?
Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin: One night, I was going into the yard, but it got closed down, so everybody got directed to the theater. And while I was in the theater, there was a play going on—One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I believe, with my brother Dino Johnson. I got to witness these brothers doing some creative work that I didn’t expect, because I know them from the yard. I’d seen them in the yard, I’d seen them in the gym, I’d seen them everywhere. But when I see them up on stage, the camaraderie that they had with each other was a beautiful thing to witness and I wanted to be a part of that. I actually had to wait a year because you have to have no infractions, no tier three tickets or anything like that. At the time I was still kind of rough around the edges, so I had to wait a year to get in. And once I did, I cherished the program.

It’s not about what these men have done. It’s about who they are going to become

How did the filmmakers gain your trust to tell this story?
CM: We first met at Brent Buell’s [writer] house over breakfast, and we just talked about everything. How we see the world. We didn’t really talk about the movie, about the play, not really like that. It was just getting to know one another. We had breakfast, we went to dinner, and we walked around my neighborhood together so that they could get a feel for who I was. We had other people that came to us wanting to do something with RTA from the outside, but they felt like they were trying to use us for the story. Or like they were just trying to help some poor prisoners so that they could get a good night’s sleep or something. We didn’t want that. We didn’t get that feeling with Greg Kwedar [director] and Clint Bentley [producer, writer]. We felt that they were genuine and they were true about what they wanted to do. And then when I met Colman, we started over Zoom. Believe it or not, we started rehearsals over Zoom. I seen a dedication and commitment in the brother because while rehearsing, he was in a car driving, and he would pull over in LA to go through lines with me. That type of commitment is commendable and that’s what I was looking for. I trusted him after that.

Mr. Domingo, you’re also an EP on the film. How did you go about getting this made?
Colman Domingo: I got involved with this through Clint and Greg. They had been wrestling with trying to make a film out of meeting with these guys and being involved in the program at Sing Sing. Being teaching artists, they wanted to tell these stories. Everybody had such an incredible story. They wanted to capture the work that this program was doing. And they went through this for six, seven years, and they kept getting stalled because they felt like they were making a bastardized version of what they experienced. Then they reached out to me to say they had an idea. I said, well, what’s this? Do you have a script? They said, no, we don’t have a script yet. I said, okay. Well, what’s this idea? And they said we’re going to send you an article from Esquire Magazine that talked about Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code and getting to know these guys. They also sent me some clips of some of the productions. It was so cool. I really felt like I got to know these guys. They also wanted me to meet Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin—they thought he’d be interesting to talk to, and that he could be a co-star. Then we all got together and started crafting this together. The filmmakers really wanted both me and Clarence—who is also an EP—to help shape this. It wasn’t just like we were artists for hire, but they wanted to know what made sense to both of us as human beings and men. I came in and brought everything I had. They wanted me as an actor, director, writer, and producer. I brought every skill that I had to help shape the room in whatever way we were in. I feel like we vibed off of each other and really helped each other out. Everybody had their own superpowers, you know what I mean? We gave it all to this film.  And I’ll use this word because I think it’s rare to use this word—I’ve done a lot of films, but I think this film was done truly with so much sincerity. That is the word from start to finish. Whatever you’re experiencing in this film, sincere heart went into it from the beginning, from our producers to every artist. When the producers talked to me, they said, hey, we have two ways to do it now that we have you attached. We can go out to studios, since you have relationships with a lot of them. Or, they said, we can do it in a different way. We can keep the budget low and build it in a very community-based model where everyone above and below the line shares in its profits. And we take care of everyone. Everyone’s paid the same rate. Everyone benefits, and everyone, especially my colleagues, absolutely own their stories. I think that’s rare, and it starts with Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley and Monique Walton, and it just trickled down. I wanted to be a part of that.

I read about that, and I thought it was remarkable. I’ve never heard of that in the industry, right? How does that influence the actors on set?
CD: I think it influences every single person—you feel like this is your film. You’re not an actor for hire, or a designer for hire, or a transpo. You’re like, this is my film. Let me take care of it. Let me do exactly what I need to do to get it done. There’s still a breakdown of the days you worked and that basically goes into the pie and the pie is divided in a certain way based on what you delivered to it. Everyone wins. How beautiful.

CM: Being that this is really my first film, I thought that everyone did it this way!

CD: Until I was like, no, it doesn’t usually happen like that!

I read that during your research process, you weren’t interested in what these men that were incarcerated for, but how they were afterwards and how they are now and how the program impacted them.
CD: I’m somebody who does a lot of research for any role that I do. And I thought, okay, I need to meet people where they are. Do I need to know a lot about the prison industrial complex? Do I need to know all of that and have stats in my head and all that? No, I don’t. I didn’t need to know any of that. It’s about this RTA program. I knew the movie we were making was not a prison film, at all. I thought, oh, that’s just the container. It’s about human beings. It’s about the transformational power of art and the effect that it’s had on people. And possibility. Which makes it a bit broader, it’s about all of us instead of this limited view of a prison movie. That’s the movie we were making.

And I wanted to meet people. I’m not somebody who, especially when it comes to real people, I’m not that person who sits down with John “Divine G” and interrogates him and asks him to tell me everything about his childhood and his trauma. I didn’t do any of that. What I did do is have dinner with him, and we had a conversation. We talked and got to know each other. He told me that he went to the High School for Performing Arts and he wanted to be a dancer and DJ. I asked him about the dancing, and he said, yeah, I wanted to do Jazz and Ballet. I wouldn’t have imagined that! And he said, yeah, I’d take the train back and people would want to beat me up anytime I was doing that, so I stopped. But when he talked about dance, he lit up. Knowing that, I wanted to see how I could incorporate it. That’s where that pirouette comes in. When I’m waiting while this knucklehead [Clarence] goes in and steals my role. He goes and takes Hamlet from me! So that’s how the pirouette comes in. Because I downloaded information that I thought could be useful. It’s just getting a bit more of a person’s soul and knowing who he is today. That’s what the film is about—the process these men are in. It’s not about what these men have done. It’s about who they are going to become.

I’d love to hear about the process of combining real people, playing versions of themselves, along with professional actors.
CD:  That was Greg Kwedar’s stroke of genius. He thought, well, there are folks who’ve gone through this program and they’re actors, right? Why shouldn’t they play themselves, a version of themselves? They’re playing aspects of themselves.

CM: My character is a culmination of a lot of the experiences that I’ve witnessed and the behaviors that I’ve seen. And a bit of me as well. But it’s a lot of experiences that I witnessed. I did almost eighteen years in prison, so I saw a lot and I poured all of that into that one character. I think it was Brent that gave them the information. If you really want to know the story, you might want to talk to the men who lived it. And that was when Greg and Clint really got in contact with us and talked to us individually. They must have figured out there was no one that could play the Divine Eye but the Divine Eye!  

CD: You know, I agree! I don’t know an actor that could play the role that you played. The process was pretty organic in that way, too. They had auditions. They auditioned all these guys who went through the RTA program and cast them based on whatever qualities that Greg and Clint were building with this. And they wanted me to help anchor this as an actor who does film as well. Every day was like molding clay. We would always have a private rehearsal, to talk things through the scene. He did it in a very collaborative way. We all have an opinion on what makes sense or doesn’t make sense. Let’s stage it there. There was one scene we agreed to throw out because it didn’t make sense anymore. Then they wanted a scene of us guys just all bonding together. I said, oh, well we were doing that when were doing break dance outside. You got some cardboard? So that’s how that scene came about. We rethought the whole scene. I’m a playwright as well, and I get obsessed about lines, and thinking words can do everything, but sometimes they don’t. Sometimes it’s something physical. Sometimes you’ve got to capture something organic in the moment and build something that can only last in that moment. Which is what we think the essence of this whole film is—theater. You had to be there that night or you’re going to miss it. That’s why it feels that kinetic and organic because sometimes it happened only on that one take. And that’s the take they used.

From what I understand, you shot in a decommissioned prison. It was a real space. How does that influence the performances?
CD: It makes it even more real. The fact that we shot at a decommissioned prison that was just decommissioned two weeks before we got there helps you feel the reality of that space… the way the air flows or doesn’t flow, how tiny the cells are, just everything about it. You’re like, oh, this is a house of corrections, but this is not a place for human beings. This isn’t human. And it’s perpetuating a system that’s going to keep going. It didn’t feel like a place where you can do the work and be on the path to being better. The moment we were done with a take, I would go outside. I was always outside. I couldn’t be in that environment. The air felt different. I always had to get somebody to take me back and forth to my literal holding cell. I couldn’t tell where I was because it’s designed that way. For  me, it’s intentional. You think about all the things that it does to the psyche. How it’s wearing and tearing on you. How it’s breaking you down instead of helping you do the work to rethink.

CM: For me, there was a lot of apprehension. Especially the scene where I’m in a cell by myself and I reach for the script—I’m actually in a cell that was right downstairs from a cell I actually was in, when I was in this prison. And it was that way for all of us because everybody, every one of us came through this prison. It was a reception prison, downstairs. You get everything you need and then you get sent to whatever prison you’re going to stay at. So all of us had been in this prison before. Sometimes you could catch us in the corner, just talking, because we had to decompress ourselves. We had a psychologist on set as well, in case there were any anxieties that we needed to talk about. I don’t even know who that person was but I may have talked to them! Because I talked to everybody on set. I was interested in the cameraman’s work, I was interested in Ruta’s [Kiskyte] work, the continuity. I’m interested in everything, in front of the camera and behind. But we found more peace just dealing with it on our own and talking to ourselves because there are some things only we understand. That’s how we got each other through it.