HOLLAND - Michelle Bombe of the Hope College theatre faculty plays a behind-the-scenes role in a program featured in a documentary film that will premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival later this month.

Bombe, who is an associate professor of theatre, director of theatre and resident costume designer at Hope, designs the costumes and provides technical support for "Shakespeare Behind Bars," part of the educational outreach of the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival. Philomath Films has produced a documentary about the prison-based program that is one of only 16 such films selected to have its world premiere at Sundance, which runs Thursday, Jan. 20, through Sunday, Jan. 30, in Park City, Utah.

"Shakespeare Behind Bars" was created in 1995 by Curt L. Tofteland, the long-time producing artistic director of Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, and co-founded with Dr. Julie Barto, staff psychologist at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in LaGrange, Ky.

The program was designed with the inmates' personal growth in mind, and seeks to allow the adult prison population an opportunity to examine relevant personal and social issues within the structure of an aesthetic experience. The 90-minute documentary by Philomath Films follows the nine-month process of bringing Shakespeare's play "The Tempest" to performance at the medium-security prison in 2003.

Bombe, who joined the Hope faculty in 1991, works with the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival each summer, designing costumes for the festival's free outdoor presentations of Shakespeare's plays in Louisville's preservation district - a program that serves a total audience of 12,000-15,000 annually. She began working with the festival in 1998, and joined Tofteland in working with "Shakespeare Behind Bars" the next year.

"It's so rewarding to watch the growth that they experience - to witness that is a real privilege," she said. "I've always believed that theatre has the power to change people, but this is seeing it in such an immediate way."

The inmates prepare for the productions within the limits set by their incarceration. For example, Bombe noted, they might rehearse while waiting in line.

Sometimes, she said, the rehearsals themselves prove inspiring.

"One of the inmates joined us after seeing a rehearsal," Bombe recalled. "One day out on the yard, they were doing a scene from 'Julius Caesar,' and it was so captivating that everyone stopped to watch these two men doing this scene. The inmate, who was watching, wanted to be a part of that."

The productions are true to history in one respect in particular: the cast is all-male, just as it was in the Elizabethan playwright's day.

As a costumer, she is careful to keep the production's context in mind.

"The philosophy of designing costumes for the prison productions is a little different," she said. "We never forget that they're inmates. Their prison uniform becomes the base of the costumes, so we always have that visible in some way," Bombe said.

Watching the inmates present their finished production to their peers, she has found that all the elements combine to produce a powerful experience.

"That's part of the power of the performances," Bombe said. "You see it on many levels. Not only do you hear the great words of Shakespeare and the situations that those characters are in, but then you have the added layer of these human beings that are convicted criminals and their journeys to redemption."

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