“On the Eve of Abolition” at Arts Emerson imagines the last prison

What would it mean to abolish the prison system as we know it? The activists behind a new play recognize this is a far-fetched idea, so they look to the future to imagine it. Until the year 2047, to be precise.

In “On the Eve of Abolition,” community theater group Papel Machete, jointly based in Boston and Puerto Rico, imagines a declining prison in a rural part of the former United States. The prisoners prepare for their release. Outside the walls, abolitionists, organizers and families of the prisoners wait for the moment.

The multimedia event, which will take place from October 31 to November 3 at the Emerson Paramount Center, is the first large-scale stage production by Papel Machete, who has been creating politically charged street theater with giant puppets and masks since 2006. The grand scale of the story, “On the Eve of Abolition,” features elements of video projection, toy theater and stop-motion animation, as well as more than a dozen actors and a percussive Afro-Caribbean score.

It was time for Papel Machete to develop a feature-length project that the group could continue to perform for years to come, says Jorge Díaz Ortiz, co-founder of AgitArte, a working-class community project in Lynn. He is the founder and director of Papel Machete, a creative offshoot of AgitArte.

As Díaz Ortiz explained during a video call with his colleague Dey Hernández Vázquez, the group usually spends several months coming up with a piece of street theater “that 300 people see. Then it is put in a box, and no one ever sees it again.

“Dissemination is crucial. You want as many people as possible to see your work.”

After Boston, the group will perform “On the Eve of Abolition” in Santurce, a municipality of San Juan, Puerto Rico, where their theater company is based. Papel Machete has a home in Roxbury, where members stay when they are in Boston.

Díaz Ortiz edited “When We Fight, We Win” (2016), a guide to 21st century social activism produced by AgitArte in collaboration with Greg Jobin-Leeds, co-founder of the Cambridge-based Schott Public Education Foundation. Hernández Vázquez is curator of the podcast of the same name. And yes, the book and the podcast share their title with a campaign slogan that has recently become central to the presidential campaign, during Kamala Harris’ rallies.

It’s “ironic,” says Díaz Ortiz, who graduated from Emerson College with a degree in mass communications in 1994, to see the phrase being co-opted “by someone who is on the right side of what we considered right 20 years ago.” .”

The idea behind the slogan, he said, is simple: “Even if we lose, you learn along the way.”

Initially, Díaz Ortiz considered himself a community organizer, not an artist.

“I ended up in some run-down neighborhoods trying to work miracles,” he said. “I began to experience popular education” – a philosophy of collaborative learning and community organizing – “and then popular theater.”

Although he is a prominent voice for both AgitArte and Papel Machete, Díaz Ortiz sees the work as a group effort.

“For me it’s been a collective journey,” he said. “People don’t understand it. They are looking for the leader, but this is truly collective work.”

The idea behind “On the Eve of Abolition” emerged several years ago, when members of AgitArte were working with fellow activists in the American South on the “money bail” movement. That campaign calls for the abolition of cash bail for arrested persons yet to be tried. They knew they wanted to create a theater performance to protest the industrial prison system.

“Someone said, ‘What about the last day of the last prison?’” Díaz Ortiz recalled. “And I thought, that’s conceptually great.”

Working with experimental theater maker Deborah Hunt, the Papel Machete crew explored different methods of telling their story, with a cast of hundreds, many represented by miniature figures.

“Deborah loves exploring working with scales,” says Hernández Vázquez, project manager at AgitArte. “It was the unfolding of the mystery, the magic of putting this piece together.”

Recalling the water shortage after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, the creators devised a scenario in which the prisoners, based in an Appalachian town, are put to work with mine water. The water is then shipped to the space colonies where the wealthy now live.

Given the recent hurricane devastation in North Carolina, says Díaz Ortiz, “the parallels are a bit funny, and not in a good way.”

In the future setting of “On the Eve of Abolition,” the United States has collapsed. For Díaz Ortiz, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The collapse of the old order means a renewed sense of possibility.

“I think things that crumble leave a space,” he said. “Who is going to take that space?”

PRIOR TO ABOLITION

Oct. 31-Nov. 3, 7:30pm Friday-Saturday 8pm, Sunday 2pm $10-$92.50. Emerson Paramount Center, 559 Washington St., Boston. artsemerson.org

James Sullivan can be reached at [email protected].