Subscribe to Lemonada Premium for Bonus Content

How can art transform a life? For Clarence Maclin, the answer unfolded during his incarceration at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Through a program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts, he used theater as a way to process trauma onstage and off. Now starring in the A24 film “Sing Sing”, Clarence tells us what it was like acting out his own story on the big screen. Plus, how a more compassionate justice system doesn’t just transform the lives of incarcerated people – it strengthens society when they return as productive, creative and empowered community members.

To learn more about Rehabilitation Through the Arts, visit rta-arts.org. Also be sure to check out the film, “Sing Sing,” wherever you can.

Follow When it Clicked wherever you get your podcasts, or listen ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime Membership.

Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.

Want to become a Lemonada superfan? Join us at joinsubtext.com/lemonadasuperfan.

Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and all other Lemonada series: lemonadamedia.com/sponsors.

To follow along with a transcript, go to lemonadamedia.com/show/ shortly after the air date.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Ana Zamora, Clarence Maclin

Ana Zamora  01:39

Welcome to When It Clicked, I’m your host, Ana Zamora, founder and CEO of the Just Trust, an organization fighting for a criminal justice system that works better for all of us. In this series, I’m talking to people from all walks of life to ask why they’re working to transform our justice system. We may come to this issue for very different reasons, but ultimately, we all want the same thing, to create safety and opportunities for all. Some of my guests have made mistakes in the past and have been to prison. Some have a family member who has been to prison like I do, and others are driven by human rights, racial justice, faith or economics, whatever their reason, all are welcome at this table. 17 years. That’s how long Clarence Maclin lived behind bars in prison. Now he’s got a breakout role in Sing Sing, a new film from a 24 where he plays a very familiar character himself in his own life and in the movie, Clarence, happened upon a theater program that would change his life forever. I’m so excited for Clarence to share his story with you, particularly about when it all clicked for him, when he realized through his acting that something else was possible. It’s a lesson in looking inward, finding yourself by being someone else and the unconventional idea that should be way more conventional, treating incarcerated people like people can change everything. Clarence’s story from prison to the big screen is more than a personal triumph, it’s also a blueprint for a better, more compassionate justice system. Okay, let’s get into my conversation with Clarence. So I want to start off at the beginning. Growing up, what were you taught about right and wrong, and what did you think about the criminal justice system?

 

Clarence Maclin  03:49

Well, growing up, I was taught right and wrong by my mother, and you know, she was really stern about it. Raising three boys on her own, she, like she had a real solid moral compass, coming from the south and coming from the church, and, you know, moving to New York for for economic reasons and but she never left. She never uh, deviated from her values and her morals and her principles. So coming up, I pretty much knew right from wrong. It’s just that circumstances put you in a sense, where you compromise what you know, and that’s what it was, because my mother never taught me wrong or taught me bad behavior, those things I picked up along the way.

 

Ana Zamora  04:29

Do you have some memories or some stories that you can share about kind of a moment, or some moments when you started to veer away from that path that your mom had taught you and tried to put you on?

 

Clarence Maclin  04:41

Yeah, I can remember, I can remember vividly one one evening where it was really, really challenged. The morals and principles that my mother had given me were challenged by circumstances. And it was the night, the evening of the blackout in 1977 I believe that evening, you know, everybody in my. Up building the whole everybody was going to loot and robbing still. And my mother was like, no, we don’t do that. We don’t do that, you know? And I was tempted, because everybody was going, but mom had such a firm grip on me at that time that I didn’t never, I never ventured far from what she predicted was right.

 

Ana Zamora  05:19

Sounds like you had a really great mom, so it’s no secret that you spent some time in prison, inside, if you’re comfortable, can you talk a little bit about how that became part of your story?

 

Clarence Maclin  05:35

Well before I went into Sing, sing, I was living in North Carolina, Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.

 

Ana Zamora  05:40

Me, that’s where I live.

 

Clarence Maclin  05:41

Are you really? I was living in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina. I lived on, I lived on Sportsman’s trail. Yeah, I live right over there on Sportsman’s trail, Rocky Mount. Me my son’s mother and my daughter’s mother. And, you know, I had a little I came to New York to do some school shopping for my brother’s kid, and got caught up in a in a robbery case, you know.

 

Ana Zamora  06:04

Wow, I didn’t know that. So what were those early days at Sing, sing like for you.

 

Clarence Maclin  06:09

So Sing sing, my early days, you know, I was already bucking the system, already like, you know, still living outside, might as well be the beast they want me to be. So I just started, you know, I mean, doing what I do, being in the yard, and gravitating towards the negative aspects of our culture, our history, our music, and all the things that that that we invest so much time in, but we also, there’s also a negative aspect to certain things, and I was gravitating more to that in a resentful way. You know, being resentful and coming across the arts, coming across rehabilitation through arts, actually turned back on that artistic youth that I used to be, because long before this, I was, I like to draw, I like to paint, I like to create with my hands, and that that led me into doing graffiti writing, writing graffiti on the trains. That led me into taking the comic book characters and drawing the comic book characters and creating my own little stories with them, you know. But that too was considered like a nerd, a nerd in my neighborhood, growing up in Mount Vernon, you know, growing up in Mount Vernon, New York, that would be still considered kind of like nerdy behavior. So, um, I gravitated towards the popular kids. I wanted to be popular. I wanted to be I wanted to be one of the in crowds. So, you know, that led me to a negative lifestyle, denying who I really was, the artist that I really was.

 

Ana Zamora  07:41

Wow, and now you’ve come full circle.

 

Clarence Maclin  07:43

Right now back to the artist.

 

Ana Zamora  07:45

Now you’re back to the artist. I love it, you know, it’s interesting. What you just said, you know, you you wanted to be part of the popular crowd. That is, like such a common theme, you know, wanting to gravitate towards something else, a different life, a new set of friends, and then things can go downhill really quickly from there, so in the movie Sing sing, you know, you really do. You’re, I mean, you’re playing yourself. You really avert a version. Sure, you really do see that harder self, you know, that harder part of you, before you got involved in the theater program, I want to dig into that a little bit like, how did that feel for you? You know, you were outwardly portraying hardness, but what did it feel like inside?

 

Clarence Maclin  08:36

Inside, it felt like I was revisiting a place that I really didn’t, you know, I’m glad I’m in control at this time around, while I’m revisiting, because at the first the onset, I was really not in control. Was like I was letting environment dictate action, rather than now, in this situation, I’m telling the story. I’m being the I am being the character that I need to be to get the story told, however, I can come out of this anytime I want to.

 

Ana Zamora  09:05

Fair enough, okay, I want to. We’ve talked a little bit about rehabilitation through the arts, or RTA, as it is, called incredible program. You know, I’ve heard this great story that you’ve shared in other interviews about how you found out about the rehabilitation through the arts program. Basically, it’s from what I know, you went to a prison chapel and kind of stumbled into a rehearsal or something. Can you tell tell me that?

 

Clarence Maclin  09:35

Yeah, it was a full on production. What happened was, I was going to the yard that night to do some other things. However, the yard got closed down because of a thunder and lightning storm, so we diverted. Everybody met up at the Chapel, because that’s the only thing open where we all could get in. So we all get in. We get in here. Now there’s no early go back. You gotta stay for the whole thing. You can’t leave. So I’m. Now I’m sitting here and I’m recognizing guys on the stage. I’m recognizing these guys from different parts of the jail, and it’s guys that I respect for different reasons are not not putting on place these I don’t know these guys for this right here, but I’m not like Dino Johnson. I’m seeing up here. I’m seeing my boy, shorty King. I’m seeing a lot of guys that I know, but now they’re born station in a whole different capacity in it, and it somehow triggered, and it was a lot of volunteers up on stage, it was a lot of people up there, and they were having a great time, and they was creating some art. And it turned on the artists back in me. And I wanted, I needed. I gotta be a part of this. I need, how do I sign up? What? How do I get up on this stage? I wanted to be a part of that. But, you know, I had, I had to wait a whole year because you couldn’t have, you couldn’t have any tickets, any infractions, can’t get in any trouble or anything. And at the time, at that point, I was getting in a lot of trouble. I was a lot of I was a handful at the time, so I had to wait a whole year. Then I finally get in. So I finally get in the program. Now, no tickets stop, and I’m good, I’m clear, and I get in, and I get a part, somebody drops out of a play, they come to me and say, do I want to roll? Yes, I do. I get in now, mind you, I have no lines.

 

Ana Zamora  11:31

Hey, you gotta get a start somewhere.

 

Clarence Maclin  11:36

Elizabethian period play. So we’re It’s very colorful, and I’m posturing and posturing and and then the director, Peter Barbieri, he says, Oh, listen, you postured really well. Gave me two lines. You gave me two lines.That was it. Now, I got bit by the bug. I want to be the lead now. I need more lines now.

 

Ana Zamora  11:59

Oh, I know the feeling I’m a theater nerd myself, and I know the feeling, once you get that first lines, just want more.

 

Clarence Maclin  12:06

Yeah, the transformation that takes place in the movie of of going from one mindset to another, that’s a real transformation that took place for me, with me, while I was in prison, and a large part of it is due to the arts, and another part of it is due to the education that the combined two because at the time I was doing rehabilitation through the arts, I was also getting my degree in behavioral science. So the two go hand in hand. For me, they just work so well together. These two programs are what really brought me into the light, into the truth of what my destiny should be, what I should be doing. As far as storytelling, this is my thing, you know. And I would have never knew that had but for finding the stage and and getting around these remarkable brothers and these remarkable volunteers that came in and and, you know, that was the springboard into college, because many of the brothers that was in RTA were also in college programs.

 

Ana Zamora  13:10

Yeah, that’s incredible. Um, I want to, I want to back up a little bit, though. So after you got into the program, it sounds like you worked really hard for a whole year to stay out of trouble. I did get into the program you get your first roles. Was there a particular moment when you started to see a different future for yourself?

 

Clarence Maclin  13:32

I think that the most specific time I could give you is when I did Oedipus Rex, great play, when I did Oedipus Rex, and I began to understand the parallels, like between this character and me, like how he ran, he ran from his he ran from a prediction that was said of him. And I began to see a lot of times in my life, even even though I might lash out. And it’s really me running from it. It’s really I’m running from whatever it is I might not be physically, just, just physically leaving. I mentally depart from that. I mentally run from that. And I may disguise it with anger, or I might describe disguise it with something else. But it’s really me not wanting to deal with that. So once you can see these things, now we go work on it. Now, if you never see it, you never get a chance to work on it.

 

Ana Zamora  14:31

Yeah? Wow, and Oedipus Rex did that for you I love.

 

Clarence Maclin  14:34

Yeah, Oedipus Rex did that for me.

 

Ana Zamora  14:36

It’s such an incredible play.

 

Ana Zamora  16:02

I think a lot of people have this idea that people who have been incarcerated don’t deserve or can’t benefit from rehabilitation programs like this one, or even arts programs in general. So I’m curious if you were talking to somebody right now that said incarcerated people don’t deserve a theater program like RTA. What would you say to those people? How would you convince them otherwise?

 

Clarence Maclin  16:30

I would convince them by showing them how society deserves for people in prison to be in programs like this. Because these people are coming home, we’re gonna come home. Who do you want on a grocery store line with you? Who do you want bringing his kids to the park to play with your kids? Who do you want? Do you want somebody who’s been through theater programs and college programs and investing in himself and trying to be a better person, to come back and be a contribution to society rather than a detriment or do you want somebody that just spend the yard and do nothing for 10 years, but think about what are you going to do when he get out? No preparation, no plan, no nothing. Who is society deserving of having to come home? What do you deserve to have come home?

 

Ana Zamora  17:19

I love that answer. So what? What else do you feel like you learned? What skills did you bring home with you after being a part of this program?

 

Clarence Maclin  17:30

One of the main skills that I learned was listening, communication, like, like, seeing, um, communication is not just you talking, it’s also listening. And, you know, meeting somebody, and you know, coming halfway like and not always having to agree, or not always having to be agreed with. You know, sometimes some ideas may take a little more time for both of us, because both parties, we may not come to a conclusion today, and that’s fine.

 

Ana Zamora  18:03

That’s okay. I gotta say, I think a lot of people who haven’t been to prison need to learn how to listen better. Okay, I want to talk about Sing sing the movie, because it is so exciting. It’s so different than any other film set in prison than I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them, and I have to imagine that making this film meant revisiting some pretty intense memories for you. Were there moments during the film that really hit close to home, scenes that brought up particularly powerful emotions. I’d love to hear a little bit about that.

 

Clarence Maclin  18:43

Oh yeah, there was a few I could bring to mine really quickly. And I’m sure you’re going to identify the circle when they say, Everybody close your eyes and go to that place. That’s an actual exercise that we devised because we noticed that after after production, a lot of the men have a crash period, like after all the hype, after being in the play production, the applause, the lights and everything the last night, when it goes away and you go right back to your cell and you become 9687, 1997, again, it’s a crash so we devised a lot of program, a lot of a lot of exercises to deal with that. And that was one of those things, and it was real emotional for me, because I’ve seen how, I see how in in real in real life, how those exercises actually save lives and help me.

 

Ana Zamora  19:32

It’s so powerful and so beautiful. I love that. Um, I know you’ve spoken before about how you didn’t really see yourself in other movies that depicted prison and how important it was for Sing Sing, to really shine a light on the prison population in a way that really hasn’t been done before in the media. So I’m curious, what’s one misconception about incarcerated people that you wish people could understand.

 

Clarence Maclin  19:57

Now everyone in prison is exactly a lot. Like, like everyone is carrying a shank, or everyone is trying to rape somebody, or everybody’s manipulative. I’m not saying that those people don’t exist and that those people exist out here too. They exist everywhere, but I’m not. I’m just saying that that’s not the only thing that’s going on in every prison, there’s a segment of of population of people who are genuinely trying to better themselves. I’ve been to San Quentin with men who are not coming home, but they focus on bettering themselves, not for themselves, for people that are still in their lives, that are not in prison. They want to better themselves for somebody else. And in every every prison, there’s a segment of population that feel this way, and the light never gets cast on them. The lights gets cast on the violence or the corruption, either the violence of the prisoners or the corruption of the prison guards. That seems to be the only, only segment of population that gets any attention in prison. You never hear about the beautiful artwork that’s being produced in prison and being sold. You never hear about these things, because the those, those are beautiful people that created that beautiful work.

 

Ana Zamora  21:17

And all the hard work that goes on in prison, people, to your point, people working hard to transform their lives. Those stories are so rarely told, and I think that’s one of the most powerful things about this movie. All right, I want to, I want to turn now to a topic that’s really important to me, and something that I think that our criminal justice system, our prison system, must do a lot better job, which is rehabilitation. So you’ve talked about, you’ve talked before about how for you personally, art gives you permission to peel back layers of trauma and hardship. Tell me a little bit more about what you meant by that.

 

Clarence Maclin  22:01

What I mean is that trauma only compiles on itself, like if you never address it, you’re just gonna add a layer of trauma on top of trauma you already was dealing with. But through art, you get to peel back these layers and live these experiences through somebody else’s life, through somebody else’s footsteps. This is the real reason why I believe theater was created in the first place was to show you that you’re not the only one going through whatever it is you go. You know this is a human condition. So human people are going to have similar experiences all throughout history. This is why we learn from art. This is how come we can learn social things from art. We can learn how to be better towards one another, socially, through art. You know, this is the, this is what I mean, that’s not by just not for one individual like me to peel back the layers, but collectively, we’re going to have some layers that peel back too.

 

Ana Zamora  22:55

That’s right

 

Clarence Maclin  22:55

You know, we’re going to have to peel back some layers collectively, yeah, as well. I mean, we have our own little layers that we have to feel back on our own, but collectively, there’s some things that we may have to peel back in order to heal society.

 

Ana Zamora  23:09

100% I agree with you.

 

Clarence Maclin  23:11

We could do it through art.

 

Ana Zamora  23:12

Yeah, I mean, acting literally allows you the opportunity to live in someone else’s shoes, which I think is a powerful, powerful learning experience. Okay, it is very clear that theater had a profound impact on you and continues to have a profound impact on you today. But as you said, people in prison are different, and so I would assume that other people respond differently to other programs. So I’m curious, what other program, rehabilitation programs, do you know about that you saw being helpful for other folks that maybe didn’t want to act well.

 

Clarence Maclin  23:49

I see, um, people benefiting from a lot of from a lot of the programs in in prison, depending on how much you willing to put in to yourself, people may benefit from a drug program because they have drug problems, they may not want to act to anything they think this might not benefit. It might not address the initial problem, but the two programs that I seen that was the most beneficial to me was rehabilitation through the arts, top, first and foremost, and Hudson link, the college program that afforded me to get my education. Because without with these two programs hand in hand, I began to really, really travel the world for myself. Right from my cell I’ve been around the whole world already, just from being able to read about it, picture it in my mind, and then hit the stage and act it out too. I was already free a long time ago.

 

Ana Zamora  24:48

It’s amazing. Now I want to talk about another, another thing that I’m really interested in understanding better, and that my organization, the just trust looks at a lot. Which is this idea that people should be held accountable for their actions, but I think that we need to think very differently about what accountability is and how it happens. I don’t personally believe that accountability always just equals punishment. So I’m curious what does true accountability mean to you, and how can our prison system actually help people choose a different path, like you did, instead of just punishing them?

 

Clarence Maclin  25:30

I think education with me, for me, is going to always be the first step in any type of anybody taking accountability for their own actions. Because if you don’t really, if you really don’t understand, if you really don’t understand the value of what you did or the value of what you took, you know, then it’s going to be really hard for you to really be accountable, because you have no value. You don’t have the value system intact that has to be addressed first. You know, not to say that anyone gets off the hook, because you don’t know that’s not, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying punishment, of course, because we all grown, and we always have to have but levels of punishment. After certain levels of punishment, you only going to make a person numb. And if that’s what you’re looking for, you want a zombie to come home, somebody that is capable of doing anything under some with no moral compass at all. I don’t think that’s what we need. I think that we need, in order to to even approach accountability, we have to make sure that everybody is mentally culpable, for accountability.

 

Ana Zamora  26:39

That’s right.

 

Clarence Maclin  26:39

You know, we gotta expand this community. We gotta bring these walls down. Because even though the community inside prison is a part of this community too, it’s just a it’s a microcosm of a macrocosm.

 

Ana Zamora  28:08

That’s right, and it also happens to be mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, so it’s literally part of our family.

 

Clarence Maclin  28:24

Everybody is connected. There’s no way you’re just gonna You can’t just lock them up, leave them over there, and you think everyone’s gonna forget about us. That’s not how this is gonna work. We’re part of the community, too.

 

Ana Zamora  28:40

What did it feel like watching this movie and seeing your own story depicted on the big screen? What did that feel like?

 

Clarence Maclin  28:54

Oh, man, it’s crazy to see it, to see people the way people are receiving it is so crazy. I snuck to the angelica one time to watch the movie. I sat in the back and, um, I’m watching people as they come by. So certain people like that look like that looks like and then one lady comes up and she shakes my hand. She says, you did a great job in the movie. And after that, I was swarmed. Now I’m taking the pictures I’m talking to people, everybody’s loving it. And that was one of the best feelings to just be to be able to to cause those type of emotions, to make people really enjoy themselves. You know, in that story, to get lost in my story, you know.

 

Ana Zamora  29:44

And do you think? Or have you heard from people that watching Sing, sing and seeing your story has helped them change their mind about prison?

 

Clarence Maclin  29:53

Yes, I’ve had, I’ve had people tell me like they hit my own Instagram and they tell me that they. Already had a loved one that’s locked up, uncle, I believe he’s locked up for a number of years. They didn’t go see him. They wrote them off. Nobody checked him for him. So now, after the movie, they said, let me go check and see what he’s doing man, let me just go see and after you go see him, you find a totally different man here. Now you found that man that you always wanted them to be but you wrote them all and after the movie. But see, those type of connecting stories are the ones we do it for.

 

Ana Zamora  30:29

That’s right. I love hearing that. Okay, throughout this conversation, I’ve noticed a really important theme here, which is storytelling, and it is clearly very important to you, and you’re a natural storyteller, um, especially when stories can make positive change and shine a light on people who don’t always get the spotlight right. So when you think about what’s next, what kind of stories do you want to start telling moving forward?

 

Clarence Maclin  30:55

Oh, man, you know I want to do. I want to do a little bit of everything. I want to do some Western who want to do, I want to do some Shakespeare. Yeah, I want to do a romantic comedy. I want to do it all.

 

Ana Zamora  31:12

If you need any help with the Shakespeare, I’m your gal, please call on me. All right, my friend. Before we wrap up, I just got to ask one last question.

 

Clarence Maclin  31:21

Yeah.

 

Ana Zamora  31:22

Which is, what was it like to work with Coleman Domingo and now to be a star yourself walking on red carpets. I mean, tell me about what Hollywood Life is like.

 

Clarence Maclin  31:32

And listen, Coleman Domingo is a true gentleman, man. He’s a great guy from the beginning, from the door, like when we first met, we met over zooms. We was we met over zoom got we bonded, got to know one another. Even did a few, like rehearsings of scripts over zoom. And what, what convinced me was I would be in, I would be in New York. He’s in LA driving the car, and I’m going through, I can’t I’m getting stuck on the line or whatever, and he’ll pull over to the side of the road to help me get through that. And then, wow. So that type of commitment and dedication got to be met like you can’t just let him be the only one doing and plus, you know, his birthday is a day before month, it’s November 28 November 29 so it’s like.

 

Ana Zamora  32:17

I’m November 27.

 

Clarence Maclin  32:18

Get out, November 27 Happy birthday.

 

Ana Zamora  32:24

Happy birthday, Sagittarius. Well, it sounds, it sounds like Coleman is not only an exceptional actor, which he is, I’m such a fan, but it sounds like he is an incredibly decent human being and really committed. So that’s great to hear.

 

Clarence Maclin  32:47

And very creative. Always creating. He’s great guy.

 

Ana Zamora  32:52

Nice, thank you so much. Clarence, this was such a wonderful conversation. I want to keep talking to you, but we’re at time, and that was amazing.

 

Clarence Maclin  33:00

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

 

Ana Zamora  33:11

Thanks for listening to When It Clicked. You can learn more about rehabilitation through the arts, at rta-arts.org, and I encourage you to go see Sing Sing wherever you can.

 

CREDITS  33:24

When It Clicked is a production of Lemonada Media and the Just Trust. I’m your host, Ana Zamora, Hannah Boomershine is our producer. Muna Danish is our senior producer. Ivan Kuraev is our audio engineer, with additional engineering support from Johnny Vince Evans. Music is from APM. Jackie Danziger is our VP of partnerships and production. Executive Producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs. Follow When It Clicked wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.