Pause & Effect:

Transformative Theater for Our Community Members Experiencing Incarceration

Verge Theater’s six-year-old Pause & Effect program offers theater classes to inmates inside the Gallatin Valley Detention Center (GCDC) in Bozeman, MT, currently the only facility statewide where incarcerated Montanans have access to ongoing theater education. We teach three classes each week inside the jail, offering inmates an opportunity to collaborate, learn new coping skills, tell their stories, and find joy during what, for many, is a bleak time in their lives.

Verge Theater recognizes that justice cannot be achieved by focusing solely on changing incarcerated individuals. Lasting change requires transforming the relationships, perceptions, and systems that contribute to incarceration. Through storytelling, dialogue, and creative expression, our programs address the social conditions that perpetuate harm while fostering healing, connection, and community resilience. Participants strengthen communication, emotional regulation, identity, and accountability in collaborative settings—protective factors that support long-term well-being and successful reintegration.

Play & Effect:

helping inmates reintegrate into their community

Ninety-five percent of incarcerated individuals rejoin their communities, but face a mountain of systemic obstacles working against their successful reintegration. In response to current Pause & Effect participant requests for help with reintegration, Verge Theater is developing a re-entry program: Play & Effect, set to launch its pilot this fall. Play & Effect offers safe, creative, and structured learning opportunities for previously incarcerated Montanans, side-by-side with other community members. Through Play & Effect, previously incarcerated community members can join three cohorts a year, meeting weekly for 13 weeks per cohort, culminating in a public showcase. Play & Effect will create a safe learning environment that cultivates community connections, deepens understanding between people of all backgrounds who wish to participate, and challenges the current political divide to which Americans across the US fall victim daily. Theatre education offers opportunities to develop communication and teamwork skills, fosters empathy and laughter, boosts self-confidence, and provides a creative outlet for processing emotions and trauma through writing and performance.

Here is some of the feedback we’ve received from Pause & Effect participants and their family members:

"I am writing to express my gratitude for the offering you give to Gallatin County Detention Center. [My son] has enjoyed your class and it has provided a lightness to his heart in a heavy time. It has allowed him to have the amazing gift of laughter and creativity. It gives him something to look forward to and gives him a lens outside of his current situation. I am so appreciative of the gift that you are giving.”

“It’s so cool that you are here and doing this. We wouldn’t be doing something like this if you didn’t show up and I love coming to your class. I don’t know when I’m getting out of here, but it is the one time of the week I get to feel like a human.”

"People might write us off as just a bunch of convicts. They think we're bad, but being in here and talking to everyone, most people are good. Most people want to help each other. We just want to laugh together."