Andy's
by Donald C-Note Hooker
Title
Andy's
Artist
Donald C-Note Hooker
Medium
Drawing - Works On Paper
Description
In 2018, Leah Joki's No Joke Theater was allowed to bring it's program to the prisoners on B Facility. The No Joke Theatrical program focuses on acting, playwriting, directing, stage management and design by using classical, contemporary and original material from which the participants learn responsibility, communication skills, empathy and the desire to live life differently. Muhammad E. White Ali, who edited the acts in the play, "Fathers and Sons (A play by prisoners)," along with C-Note, was the official Stage manager for the act Blythe, in the play "Lost and Found." White asked C-Note to draw a menu and sign for Andy's Diner.
"Blythe" was written in 1991 by Dan McMullan, a prisoner at Chuckwalla Valley State Prison (CVSP). He wrote the play as part of a statewide playwriting contests conducted by the Arts-in-Corrections program. Blythe won first place out of 40 other entries. In 1992, the Arts-in-Corrections program selected it for a staged reading in Hollywood involving Ed Asner. At the time, Asner was the head of the Screen Actors Guild. At the last minute, the reading was cancelled by the warden of CVSP. He insisted the play be removed.
Reporter Mary Rees writing for the Berkeleyside on November 17, 2016, wrote, "Part of it was they wouldn't let us perform it inside the prison; they thought it would be embarrassing for the officers," director Leah Joki said in a talkback session after the play. "But they signed off for it to go out to Los Angeles, and the warden kind of forgot that he had signed this off months ago, and apparently he was at another meeting with these other wardens saying, 'I can't believe that they're doing a play about your prison with these big-name actors.'... I think he was embarrassed, and he pulled it."
The play takes place during the early 1990s at Andy's Diner. A fictional diner in Blythe, a tiny desert town near the Arizona border, and the location of Chuckawalla Valley State Prison. Two residents and a waitress briefly gripe about the unfulfilled promise that the prison would bring more people and more growth to the town. When a prisoner goes on the lam, two corrections officers from the nearby prison drop in. The success of this work is the raw humor that juxtaposed the seriousness of the topics discussed.
"I just wanted to give the work that desert landscape feel of expanse, isolation, and the kind of place that produces alien habitation. I wasn't told what medium to use," says C-Note, "But I chose a felt-tip pen on 100lb paper. Other artist may not have grasped the communication value in flat shapes, as opposed to three-dimensional ones through the use of light and shadow."
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August 1st, 2020
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