Poetic Justice Project Actor Lands TV Show

by Deborah Tobola

Next month he's making the leap from stage to television, filming the pilot of a new web series drama called "Solitary." He plays the lead character, Marcus Edwards, who has spent more than twenty years in solitary confinement.

I first met William Brown when a friend of his — another inmate — brought him into my Arts in Corrections office in 2007 to audition for a role in the play. We'd lost an actor and needed a replacement fast. I handed him a script and he did a cold reading. The next thing he knew, he was playing one of the leads in our production.

The next year, actors from the London Shakespeare Workout visited the prison and Mr. Brown found himself onstage again doing Shakespeare. By then, it was clear that he'd been bitten by the theatre bug. He paroled in 2008, just before I retired from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to start Poetic Justice Project, a theatre company for formerly incarcerated men and women.

I got in touch with Mr. Brown (we used last names in prison, so he's still Mr. Brown to me and I am Ms. Tobola) in 2010 to ask him to play one of the lead roles in Poetic Justice Project's Off the Hook. I told him he would be playing a snitch, but a lovable snitch — and he pulled it off.

He went on to play Crooks (his favorite role) in our production of Of Mice and Men, which we took to the 31st Annual International Steinbeck Festival in 2011. Then he was a kleptomaniac comedic character called "Sticky the Thief" in Planet of Love in 2012. For all of these productions, he had to travel from Los Angeles to participate with fellow PJP actors.

For this assignment, Mr. Brown is traveling even farther — to Portland for the filming of the pilot. Produced by Think Ten Media, the "Solitary" team includes Executive Producer Jonathan Sanger, who has received three Academy Awards and twenty-one Academy Award nominations. His past work includes The Elephant Man, Frances, and Flight of the Navigator.

Writer/Director Ramon Hamilton's most recent film is Smuggled, which won five "Best Of" Awards and fifteen official film festival selections in 2012. Hamilton says, "It is an absolute pleasure to have William Brown play the lead role in our solitary confinement web series. His professionalism, raw talent, and life experience will surely give our lead actor the authenticity needed to grip audiences."

In last month's column, I wrote about the return of Arts in Corrections to some prisons in California. Arts in Corrections is one of the most successful programs in the history of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Mr. Brown says Arts in Corrections gives inmates a different way of looking at life. In his case, it changed his life. "Somewhere, somehow, God blessed everyone with a talent. But you have to find it. Without Arts in Corrections, I never would have looked in the direction of acting."