Discussing The Government Inspector

How does Gogol's play, The Government Inspector, reflect prison life? The questions was posed by Professor Robert Henke of Washington University when he came to discuss the play with the men at Northeast Correctional Center in Bowling Green, Missouri.

The first answer was very funny and ruefully true -- There are a lot of dumb guys in prison, like Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky (including both guards and inmates). There are also people like Hlestikhov, who is an opportunist. And people like him who are incredible bullshit artists, sometimes so skillful in their fantasies that they themselves begin to believe them.

Like the village in Government Inspector, prison is all about power and hierarchies -- who must be obeyed, who is better than another. Some of the power trips lead to abuse of power. There are also situations where a reputation or something assumed about a person can give him power he in no way deserves, or even intends.

And it's always all about the money: Who has money? Who takes bribes? Who gives bribes? In prison it may be cigarettes or stamps or favors, but there is coin in this realm, as there are in others.

I began to think about Herbert Blau's famous production of Waiting for Godot at San Quentin, where the audience understood all too well what waiting can do to a person. Or our production of Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus at MECC at Pacific, Missouri. One actor talked about Oedipus as an ex-con, someone who had committed a terrible crime and who had suffered in payment of his violation of society's rules. When he needed shelter, no one wanted to take him in. He was a pariah. And like Oedipus, the ex-con brings with him great gifts for the city that accepts him and includes him in their community.

Perhaps all great drama should be performed in prison. The world inside a prison reflects and refracts the world outside the barbed wire. The power is more obvious in tragedy, but comedy is also great and will suffice (apologies to Robert Frost).