Co-directed by Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin and Emily Sahakian at UGA, and at Spelman College, Julie B. Johnson, Keith Arthur Bolden, and Kathleen Wessel. The Georgia Incarceration Performance Project was a multifaceted, archives-to-performance collaboration and first-of-its-kind partnership between UGA and Spelman College, as well as with area prison programs. The team developed an original play, titled By Our Hands, and performed it as part of the UGA Theatre season in November 2019 and at Spelman in February 2020. We worked with UGA, Spelman, and Morehouse students, archivists, and incarcerated students taking coursework through a community partner. The final performances aimed to bring spectators to the archives and lead to conversations and reflection—across the two campuses and local communities—about Georgia’s carceral history. We received an honorable mention for the National Council on Public History’s Outstanding Public History Project Award in 2020. My collaborators Dr. Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin and Dr. Julie B. Johnson have also documented the project on their sites. Sponsors The project was generously supported, from the University of Georgia, by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through the Global Georgia Program of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, a Faculty Research Grant from the Office of Research, by the Department of Theatre and Film Studies, the Institute for African American Studies, the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, the Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection, the Ferman Fund, the McCay Fund, the Franklin Excellence Fund, and the Office of Service Learning. From Spelman College, it was supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Department of Dance Performance & Choreography, and the Department of Theatre & Performance. Additional sponsors of this production include the Atlanta Film Festival.
