A program helps children of incarcerated parents find hope and healing.

“My parents have been in jail since I was in kindergarten. I never had a dad to teach me right from wrong, never had a mom to tuck me in at night. I only had the streets.” - Fabian Rivera

Fabian Rivera, 17, stood onstage at the Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford, looking out at a sea of faces and gathering the courage to bare his soul.

Fabian Rivera plans to use his positive experience with the Judy Dworin Performance Project to help other children of incarcerated parents. [Photo: Carrie Draghi]

For Fabian, this was no ordinary play, no fictional tale. His raw, unvarnished lines in “Dreamcatching” told a portion of his life story.

After Fabian’s parents were imprisoned, foster care provided some comfort, until his foster mom died. He ended up on the streets, heading in a bad direction.

During the performance, Fabian, along with 16 other young people age 5 to 17, shared their fears and hopes through song, dance and by telling their stories. They started by carrying imaginary sacks on their backs that held “their worries and their wishes.”

In the audience were friends and family members, including one mom who came directly from serving the last day of a prison term to watch her son perform.

The play is part of the Judy Dworin Performance Project, which offers programs for children and youth built around a theme that is central to their lives: the absence of one or both incarcerated parents. Children are helped to reconnect with their parents, meet other children who share the same experience, and find inspiration and support. Support is also provided to custodial parents and other caregivers.

About 60 youth age 5 to 17 participate in the Judy Dworin Performance Project, which helps them to share their fears, hopes and experiences with having one or both parents in prison. [Photo: Carrie Draghi]

Judy Dworin, who has been holding arts residencies for woman at York Correctional Institution in Niantic for six years, founded the project with a group of diverse partners, including York, a family services organization called Families in Crisis, and the Charter Oak Cultural Center. It started as a pilot in 2009, but a $67,000 grant from the Hartford Foundation helped it expand to include about 60 children.

It includes a weekend when the children and their caregivers are brought together with the women at York, to spend more time than the one-hour visits normally allow. And, by sharing arts-based activities that reflect their feelings, hopes and dreams, children and parents learn new ways to communicate.

Joe Lea, an educator and library media specialist at York, says incarceration is often “generational,” with children and grandchildren of offenders also ending up in jail. Research shows that women who become disconnected from their families are more likely to re-offend, and children who lack positive contact with their parent are more likely to end up in jail. Breaking this cycle is critical.

Area youth perform a play, part of the Judy Dworin Performance Project, which offers programs for children and youth built around a theme that is central to their lives: the absence of one or both incarcerated parents. [Photo: Carrie Draghi]

The results, Dworin noted, have been “incredibly positive.” Fabian’s transformation is just one example. Having both parents in prison “made me want to do negative things,” he said. “I was headed in the same direction as my parents – maybe worse. This program made me want to do better.”

He became a mentor to the younger kids in the program, and now, with Dworin’s help, is writing a play called “The Life of a Lonely Kid.”

“It’s about a kid that never had his parents around going down a bad road. Then someone helps him and opens his eyes and gets him on the right path,” said Fabian. “I hope it helps other kids. I hope so.”