The Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble’s Shakespeare Prison Project

Abstract

The Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble’s Shakespeare Prison Project (known from 2006 to 2010 as the Arts in Community Enhancement, or ACE, project, and since 2011 as the Shakespeare Prison Project, or SPP) is Australia’s only ongoing Prison Shakespeare project. This chapter examines in detail the history, operation, challenges and outcomes of this project, and compares it with other Prison Shakespeare projects. This chapter adds to the weight of case studies by practitioners that exist in the literature (see Chapter 2), and when compared to them exemplifies how differences in programme operation are sometimes motivated by ideology and philosophy, but just as often determined by the characteristics of the correctional environment.