‘Good morning,’ he says. ‘Welcome to the Fletcher Correctional Players. I don’t care why you’re in here or what they say you’ve done: for this course the past is prologue, which means we begin counting time and accomplishments right here, right now.

‘As of this moment, you are actors. You will all be acting in a play; everyone will have a function, as the old hands who’ve done it before will tell you. The Fletcher Correctional Players only do plays by Shakespeare, because that is the best and most complete way of learning theatre. Shakespeare has something for everyone, because that’s who his audience was: everyone, from high to low and back again.

‘My name is Mr. Duke, and I’m the director. That means I’m in charge of the overall production, and the final say is mine.

‘But we work as a team. Each man will have an essential part to perform, and if someone’s having trouble it’s the job of his teammates to help him out, because our play will be only as strong as the weakest link: if one of us fails, we all fail together. So if a guy on your team has trouble reading the words, you need to help him. And you need to help each other memorize the parts, and understand what the words mean and how to deliver them with force. That’s your mission. We must all rise to the highest level. The Fletcher Correctional Players have a reputation to live up to, and what we create together will honour that reputation.

‘You’ve heard me mention teams, and those of you who’ve been in one of my plays before know what that means. Each of the principal characters will have a team surrounding him, and everyone on that team must learn that character’s speeches. That’s because each main actor must have some understudies, in case of illness or any other … in case of unforeseen emergencies, such as early parole, for instance. Or a slip in the shower room. The play must go on despite everything: that’s how it is in the theatre. In this company, we back each other up.

‘You’ll be doing some writing. You’ll be writing about aspects of the play, but you’ll also be rewriting those parts of the play you decide – we decide – could be made more understandable to a modern audience. We’ll be filming a video of our production; that video gets screened for everyone in the – for everyone in Fletcher. Our video will be something to be proud of, as our previous productions have been.’