Deborah Tobola is the founding artistic director of the Poetic Justice Project (PJP), a theater arts organization designed for formerly incarcerated people to engage with their community through the performing arts. Tobola conceived the idea when she worked in Arts in Corrections at the San Luis Obispo California Men’s Colony and witnessed the therapeutic power of the arts.
Much of the work done by PJP, which includes plays penned by Tobola, seeks to humanize the incarcerated and show them for what they truly are, rather than the characters portrayed in Hollywood and television. Even Tobola wasn’t free from holding misconceptions about prisoners, and she received quite an awakening when she began working in state prisons.
“When I first started working inside prison, it was a revelation to me, I guess,” she said. “I had some of the stereotypical images in mind before I ever went inside, and, of course, I discovered that people in prison are just people like those that aren’t inside of prison. All of those prejudices just dissipated when I walked into that first classroom.”
As Arts in Corrections director, Tobola engaged inmates creatively all day, whether it was in stagecraft, literature, poetry, or other arts. The collaboration that came with large stage productions, which would include actors, singers, musicians, dancers, craftsmen, and others, would ultimately serve as the inspiration for the Poetic Justice Project. But her original art form and education is in poetry, Tobola explained.
“My primary art is poetry,” she said. “I studied poetry; that’s what my MFA [master’s in fine arts] is in, but I kind of set it aside since I started PJP, but you know, it keeps pulling me back.”
Tobola wil be reading her poetry at an open mic event at the Bookworm on Jan. 10 and will include some poetry penned during her time working for Arts in Corrections.
“I have a few newer poems that I am going to read,” she said. “And I wrote poems when I was working in the prison system over the years, so I have a collection of prison poems, and I will read some of those.”
Though she has had to sacrifice her own private creative time for the needs of PJP, Tobola doesn’t count it as a loss due to the creative collaborations she gets to engage in with various artists in the program. That being the case, PJP could still use some help from locals who want to donate time, money, equipment, or expertise, Tobola explained.
“We are always looking for really good stage managers and behind-the-scenes people like sound techs,” she said. “We’re also going to be doing workshops in [Santa Maria] on a regular basis, so we would love for actors, singers, or theater people to volunteer to lead a workshop or two, or more. That would be awesome.”
Another way to support the Poetic Justice Project is buying a ticket to a production. The nonprofit organization subsists solely on ticket sales, grants, and donations. Tobola hopes to continue financial support for PJP’s production of new plays, which she finds valuable to her artists and audiences.
“I think for me, the reward is watching people at work and the transformation that takes place,” she said. “Everyone knows that art is powerful no matter what, but in this particular instance it can be just huge. You can see people’s lives transform before your eyes.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne is ready to be transformed. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 8-15, 2015.