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Recovery in the News
Theater offers a new hope for recovery
Dana Oland
Idaho Statesman
December 23, 2007
For Jon Ravenholt, theater isn't an avocation, it is his salvation.
A recovering methamphetamine addict and a former prison inmate, Ravenholt, 42, has founded the Ex-Inmate Theatre, an endeavor that is helping him reclaim his identity and piece his life together again, he said.
"To find myself pursuing theater again is just well, I'm still wrapping my mind around the concept," said Ravenholt, who has a theater degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "I didn't think anyone would talk to me about theater again."
Ravenholt runs the theater through New Hope Community Health, a recovery center founded by Dennis Mansfield, an Evangelical Christian, former politician and conservative activist.
The company has one performance to its credit, which was a success, if not by attendance, then by effort. There is little that's tangible in the hopper just now, but the theater organizers hope to make the company a continuing proposition to push the expectation of what addicts and ex-cons can achieve, Mansfield said.
Mansfield inspired Ravenholt to take this leap, Ravenholt said.
"I didn't see myself stepping back on stage," he said. "And there was Dennis, who says, 'I already see you there.' Having someone believe in you like that is powerful."
Mansfield met Ravenholt in July 2005 at the Ada County Jail, where Mansfield was running a men's Bible study group. Ravenholt was doing 60 days for driving without a license, a small charge that put him in the right place at the right time.
Ravenholt experienced a religious conversion that he credits for the success of his recovery.
"Nothing is too big for God," he said.
A NEW HOPE, A NEW START
New Hope became Mansfield's mission after he discovered his son Nate was addicted to drugs. Nate was arrested while Mansfield was in the middle of a run for Congress in 2000. For the next four years, Nate was in and out of trouble and jail, and Mansfield switched gears.
"That put me on a path that before had been invisible to me," Mansfield said. "Drug addicts and prisoners were there, but you didn't really look at them. The realness of what I saw showed me how superficial I had been. Most of my life my friends had been politicians, now they're all felons. I think I upgraded."
Nate has been sober for four years, two during prison and two living in Missouri, where he is serving out his parole.
One of Mansfield's initiatives through New Hope is to support the dreams of people like Ravenholt and Nate, who are seeking a new start in a world where ex-inmates have difficulty getting a job or a place to live.
"It's fun to see lives change," Mansfield said.
SOBRIETY
Ravenholt is talkative and charming. He is a towering, thick presence, with about 40 more pounds on him since he's been sober. He smiles broadly, revealing the dental plates he relieved from an Access to Recovery grant after losing several of his teeth.
He has the face of a character actor, the kind cast as a thug or syndicate boss. He speaks with the earnestness of a southern preacher at times, but also with the intensity of a trained actor.
With his hair shaved close, he likes to wear a beret. It's a look he picked up when he was in college and feels comfortable wearing again. Despite everything he's seen, in and out of prison, his eyes are rimmed with kindness and humor.
No one could have predicted the path he would take. He grew up in Boulder City, Nevada, the son of one of the town's leaders. When he graduated from college, he received his degree with honors. There where high hopes for his future.
Life got complicated after college, he said. His dreams of moving to Los Angeles and becoming an actor fell away. Drugs became the substitute, but they took him off track. Way off track, he says, through 15 years of addiction, and a revolving door to jail and prison.
"The summer after I graduated, I met meth. It's a comfortable destruction. I've been in every area of that lifestyle," Ravenholt said. "When I couldn't deal with the world, I found an addiction to hide in."
He went to Sandpoint, Idaho, to stay with his sister, and fell further into the meth addiction.
The drugs took everything. They took his dreams, he said, until two and a half years ago when he met Mansfield.
A DIFFERENT COMMUNITY THEATER
For his first production, Ravenholt adapted Peter Kreeft's "Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley" for a staged reading during Thanksgiving weekend. Ravenholt played C.S. Lewis.
The play is a Socratic dialogue about humanism, pantheism and Christianity.
He brought together a cast and crew of mostly theater first-timers that had a combined 350-plus years behind bars.
Everyone involved in Ex-Inmate, from the sound technician and stage manager to the actors and directors, had a record and or a history of addiction. And they all use New Hope as a hub.
Scheduling rehearsals can get complicated because they must happen between court-ordered therapy sessions, day jobs, meetings with parole officers, hearings and recovery treatment classes.
Everything about the theater, even its name, is an attempt to empower the people involved in it to reclaim their lives.
For Claudine Sipilli, coming to grips with her past made all the difference, she said.
"If someone has a problem with us being ex-inmates, they have to deal with that," said Sipilli, who works on public relations for the theater. "We've already dealt with our mistakes, and we have to live with them."
For many of the people involved, it's a chance to put the drama where it belongs, on stage rather than in their lives, said Michelle Elliott, who is a recovering addict and works as a production assistant for Ex-Inmate.
"This is a different kind of drama," she said. "Addiction is a self-imposed drama. This is a chance to be part of something that gives back to us, rather than drains us, and can continue to kill us every day if we let it."
Though the performance drew a smaller audience than they would have liked, it was a turning point for everyone involved.
"We put on a show that went off as good as it could have," Ravenholt said. "Our attendance was lower than I would have liked. That gave us our motto: 'We play for an audience of one.' Each audience member is important to us. We play for God."
THEATRICAL TURN
When the theater first began to form, Mansfield turned to the Idaho Shakespeare Festival for advice. It was a natural connection to make, Mansfield said because of their long history together.
"I used to be the brunt of jokes in the Greenshow. Now I'm looking forward to putting on my own Greenshow," he said.
Mark Hofflund, the Idaho Shakespeare Festival's managing director and a member of the National Council on the Arts, the advisory body for the National Endowment for the Arts, supports the effort to create Ex-Inmate Theatre.
"We know the arts are transformative in all communities - immigrant and youth - with people making social adjustments in whatever form that takes," Hofflund said. "People who've lost a sense of identity can find it again through theater."
And not just by being actors, he said. The very nature of theater is the shared experience between the people on stage and the audience. It can be effective therapy, whichever side you're on.
"Through theater you hold up a metaphoric mirror to yourself and the world to ask, 'What is the perception of my nature?' The question isn't so much, what do people see when they look at me. It's what do I see," Hofflund said.
Art, theater and music have been successfully used in prisons, senior communities, at-risk youth programs and mental health institutions to make a difference in people's lives, Hofflund said.
"I love what Dennis is doing," Hofflund said. "Anything I can do to help in personal and public ways to bring support to people who are the front line of this kind of effort to weave a safety net for our community."
WHAT'S NEXT
Ravenholt's life is stable. but he knows it's a daily struggle, he said.
He is reunited with his wife and three children, including a new baby girl, he said proudly. He works at Shari's Restaurant and the stagehand's union, Local 99, working events at Taco Bell Arena. He offers ministry when he can and has even returned to prison to offer hope to others.
To top it off, he's working toward a graduate certificate in alcohol and drug counseling at Boise State University.
And there's his work for Ex-Inmate, which doesn't have any productions planned. But Ravenholt is planning the next step. There is a chance to perform "Beyond Heaven and Hell" a few more times. But there is little that's tangible just now, and that's OK.
"Do I know when our next performance will be? No. I have faith that God will see us through a positive growing experience that will get us where we're supposed to be."
Ravenholt has a play he started writing in prison that he intends to finish, and he's looking for more opportunities to produce and create.
His latest ideas include a musical revue and in the most extreme manifestation: a full-scale production of "Guys and Dolls."
Starting a theater company isn't the perfect solution to all his problems, Ravenholt said, but it helps him remember who he used to be, the guy with the dream.
"Now the dream isn't to be a star, it's to get a life and support my family," he said.
There are still days the struggles seem insurmountable, but how he deals with it is a choice, he said.
"My understanding of my faith is that God is overseeing my life for the better," Ravenholt said. "I don't take the bumps of each day as seriously. I've got my kids at home. My wife loves me. I get enough rest every night. I make it through school. The fruits of my life are pretty good. Every day I don't use is a miracle. I know God has good things in store for me."