Actress Nicole Lewis acts during the Public Theater Mobile Unit’s performance of “Measure for Measure” (jonathan baskin)
As theater audiences go, the one for “Measure for Measure” last week was pretty uniform — an all-female contingent that was in uniform: the dark-green pants and shirts of the Bayview Correctional Facility, a medium-security women’s prison in Chelsea.
It was just one of several stops made by the Public Theater’s new Mobile Unit, which also performed at a men’s prison in Staten Island, a Bronx shelter for homeless women, a Queens center for the elderly and an after-school center for Newark youth at risk.
And if their reactions were anything like the one at Bayview — well, Shakespeare just made some new fans.
The 50 or so inmates at the Chelsea prison, just across from Chelsea Piers, watched the action from folding chairs in the prison’s gym. Not only were the women raptly attentive but obviously engaged — heartily laughing at the comic interludes and even offering advice.
Typical shout-out: “Don’t do it, girl!”
They chuckled when a prostitute in the play complained of bad business; booed when the young nobleman Claudio was sentenced to death; warmly oohed upon his reunion with his sister, Isabella, and cheered when the villainous Angelo got his comeuppance.
When the play ended, they leapt to their feet for a standing ovation.
Their enthusiasm was no surprise to the director, Michelle Hensley, who founded the Ten Thousand Things Theater 20 years ago, to bring live theater to an underserved population.
“It has fantastic resonance for people who’ve been incarcerated, or are homeless,” Hensley says. “It’s really a play about how you judge others.
“Shakespeare wrote for the groundlings,” she continues. “He expected audiences to shout back at the actors, which is what happens at our performances.”
She’s cut the play to two hours from its usual three-plus, but otherwise makes few concessions. “Sometimes people fall asleep in the homeless shelters because it’s the only warm place they’re in all day,” she concedes. “But then, that happens in regular theaters, too.”
At Bayview, 23-year-old Niasia Wallace welcomed the break from her evening routine, when she’d “probably be doing somebody’s hair.” Having read several of Shakespeare’s works in school, she responded most strongly to the scene in which “Claudio wanted his sister to sacrifice herself so that he could stay alive.”
The play’s themes of injustice and redemption also resonated for Taneshia Brock, 24. “I think it sends a good message to a lot of us young women that are here,” she says.
Barry Edelstein, who runs the theater’s Shakespeare Initiative, says that the program harkens back to the Public’s early days. “Joe Papp used to set up shop in neighborhoods that had very little access to mainstream culture,” he says.
“Half of the play takes place in prison, and it’s a story about a woman being put in an untenable position by men in authority,” he continues. “So the way in which these prisoners feel an absolute identification is kind of remarkable.”
Nicole Lewis, the actress playing Isabella, certainly feels the connection. “People are truly listening,” she says of the audiences they’ve played to. “They get what’s going on.”
Nor do you have to be institutionalized to see it: The Mobile Unit’s performing “Measure for Measure” at the Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, through Saturday.