AMY GOODMAN: You have been focusing on solitary

confinement since you left. I mean, many in your circumstance

would get as far away as they could of the circumstances that
you lived through when you were in Iran, but youve actually
really drilled down into it and looked here in the United States.
Talk about your project.
SARAH SHOURD: Sure. Well, when I was imprisoned in
solitary confinement, any chance I would get to see my
captors, I would say, "What youre doing is torture. What
youre doing is illegal. I can feel thatI know that something is
happening to my brain. I can no longer focus on a book for
more than a few minutes without getting frustrated, because I
have to read the same paragraph again and again."
AMY GOODMAN: Which means? Why did you have to read
the whole
SARAH SHOURD: I mean, scientific studies are really still not
there havent been enough of them, but there have been
studies that show, after just two or three days, your brain
starts to shift towards delirium and stupor. Being in that kind of
isolation isyou start to lose sense of who you are, of your
values. Our identity as people is in relation to other people,
through conversations, through work that we do in the world.
In that kind of isolation, its very easy to just completely
succumb to depression. And thats why suicide in solitary
confinement is twice as high as in the rest of the prison
population in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: So talk about Opening the Box.

SARAH SHOURD: Well, its been several years now. I started

researchingreally, it was part of my ownwhen I got out
and I saw that solitary confinement doesnt just happen in
places like Iran. Actually, in this country we have far more
people in solitary confinement than any country in the world
per capita and any country in history for far longer periods of
time. So, I was in isolation for 410 days. The U.N. special
rapporteur against torture says that 15 days can cause
permanent, lasting damage. People in this country are held for
years, for decades in some cases. And one of the most
important things for me in my ownin moving forward in an
empowering way was to talk to other survivors, was to find out
that, you know, talking to yourself, naming your body parts,
havingyou know, feeling an emotional connection to an
insect that happens to make its way into your cell is not
strange at all, that we all experience these kinds of horrors.
And so, talking to other people led to interviews, and I started
to collect these stories. And I wove them into this
play, Opening the Box.
AMY GOODMAN: So you traveled across the country,
speaking to people in solitary confinement?
SARAH SHOURD: I did, yeah. The first six months, I had 12
very in-depth letter correspondences. I was writing multiple
letters a day and found some of the most incredibly creative,
amazing people that expressed themselves so eloquently, in
many cases, through the written word, because thats their
only method of communicating with the outside world, so just
pouring their souls into these letters. And I tried to visit as
many as I could, as many as I could get permission toNew

York; New Jersey; of course, Pelican Bay in California I went

to many timesand developed these amazing relationships
and wove them into a fictional account of resistance behind
bars.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to the reading of your new
play, Opening the Box. This is a clip from the event last week,
Thursday night, hosted by Fortune Society in New York, which
helps people re-enter society after they get out of prison. So
that was the audience. Many in the audience had been in
prison. Many had been in solitary. This is a scene with a
character by the name of Rocky, a young prisoner, and this is
his reaction when he just learns that he has been remanded to
solitary confinement for 18 months.
ROCKY: Id rather be somebody else. Ive always felt that
way, a different guy on a whole different planet. I sit here
hating all the people that have what Ive never had. Its like Im
a virus no one can touch. I mean, like a tree in a forest thing.
Who says I even exist? My brain is like oatmeal. My brain is a
piece of [bleep]! What do I have left? My finger touching
another finger, the color red when the lights hit the back of my
eyes, words on repeat and repeat. I think of my Julia every
minute, and every [bleep] time theres a pain in my chest like
being stabbed. Id cut off a finger to see her. Id cut my whole
[bleep] hand. Why do I sit here in pain asking for more pain?
This [bleep] toilet! This [bleep] bed! How can they be so lucky?
They cant feel nothing! I can hit them. I can kick them. They
dont feel nothing! Id swear Id rather be punched in the face
every minute of the day than have to sit here just feeling! Get
me out of here! Get me out of this [bleep] skin!

AMY GOODMAN: Thats Rocky from Opening the Box, Sarah

Shourds play. Tell us about Rocky and who hes based on.
SARAH SHOURD: Well, he wasso I had got access to
recordings of Herman Wallace from the Angola Three, part of
what was recorded for the film Hermans House. And one of
the charactersone of the people that
AMY GOODMAN: Herman Wallace, of course, a man who
was held more than 40 years in solitary confinement,
ultimately died a few days afterhe was dying of cancer,
which is why he was released from prison and ultimately died
a free man.
SARAH SHOURD: Yeah. And it was incredible to be able to
get these recordings and just immerse myself in his voice and
create this character. So, Rocky is based on a young man that
Herman Wallace helped inside. That was a large part of his
identity. Whenever a new young person would come into the
pod, he would reach out to them, give them advice on how to
cope, tell them, you know, basically the rules, how this pod
works. And thats the relationship between Rocky and the
character of Ray Duval in my play.
AMY GOODMAN: And who played Rocky here?
SARAH SHOURD: Oh, he is a friend of a friend. He came out
of the woodwork. Hes a wonderful young actor. I actually
really hope that I can get him to come to the premiere in San
Francisco.
AMY GOODMAN: And what are you hoping to do
with Opening the Box? That was just one performance. Youre

performing it in different places around the country, excerpts of

it?
SARAH SHOURD: Yeah, yeah. We are working towards
production. Its going to premierethe world premiere will be
in San Francisco next July, July 2016, at Z Space. And so, I
mean, I think that theres been a lot of attention, you know,
comparatively speaking, on solitary confinement in the last five
years. Momentum has been building. People know the facts.
But I feel like theres still a lack of actual stories of who the
people are that end up in the deep end of our prison system,
in the worst punishment that we mete out. And so, I feel like
thesethats a role that I can play. I mean, the high-profile
nature of my case meant that I got a tremendous amount of
attention. When we performed at the Fortune Society, it was
for an audience of people, many of which hasno one has
ever asked them what it was like for them. No one has ever
asked them to talk about what happened to them in there.