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This podcast episode, hosted by John Scott and Xiaoye Zhang, explores prison theatre as a serious artistic practice and as a means of reconnecting prisons with the societies that surround them. Through a wide-ranging conversation with Holger Syrbe, co-founder of the Berlin-based theatre project Aufbruch, the discussion examines how drama can operate inside custodial settings without being reduced to therapy, behaviour management, or short-term interventions.
The episode is situated within the IN-CJ Just Arts series, which brings together practitioners working at the intersection of criminal justice, culture, and community life. In this discussion, the focus is on long-term, professional theatre work in German prisons, where productions are created and performed by people in custody, supported by an external artistic team. The work is demanding, intensive, and explicitly public, with audiences entering prisons to watch performances alongside incarcerated participants.
The conversation traces how Holger’s own background in East Germany, shaped by ideological constraint, underground art scenes, and political transition, informed his approach to artistic freedom and institutional critique. This context helps explain why Aufbruch has consistently resisted narrow definitions of prison arts as rehabilitative tools alone. Instead, the project treats theatre as theatre, holding participants to high artistic standards and expecting commitment, collaboration, and discipline over extended rehearsal periods.
A recurring theme in the discussion is the importance of audience. Theatre, Holger argues, requires witnesses. Aufbruch therefore insists on performances that are open to the public, creating rare spaces where people from outside the prison can enter, observe, and engage. This deliberate crossing of boundaries challenges the physical and symbolic separation that prisons rely on, while also placing responsibility on the institution to tolerate visibility and risk.
The episode also explores the internal dynamics of prison theatre work. Conflicts arise around trust, status, offence histories, language barriers, and resistance to roles or texts. These tensions are not avoided or smoothed over but become part of the process. Learning to work collectively, to negotiate disagreement, and to carry responsibility for a shared outcome are presented as core elements of the practice, rather than as externally imposed objectives.
Importantly, the discussion avoids simplistic claims about measurable outcomes such as reduced reoffending. Holger is clear that theatre cannot be treated as a technical solution to complex social problems. Instead, its value lies in observable changes in confidence, communication, self-organisation, and social interaction, as well as in the messages conveyed to audiences and institutions about who people in prison are capable of being.
The international dimension of the conversation is also significant. Comparisons are drawn with prison theatre traditions in Italy, community-based and therapeutic models more common in the UK, and emerging collaborations across borders. These reflections underline how cultural assumptions shape what is permitted inside prisons and how art is justified to authorities. They also highlight the importance of transnational exchange in broadening what practitioners and policymakers imagine being possible.
Overall, this podcast episode offers a grounded and reflective account of prison theatre as a civic and cultural practice. It invites listeners to consider prisons not only as sites of punishment and control, but as places where meaningful public engagement can occur. By focusing on professional artistic work rather than symbolic gestures or short-term programmes, the discussion raises challenging questions about visibility, responsibility, and the role of culture in criminal justice systems.
Listeners with interests in rehabilitation, arts practice, penal policy, or international criminal justice will find the episode both practically informative and conceptually provocative, offering insights that extend well beyond the Berlin context.