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Cool Hand Series, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that connects the arts and the American prison system. We show plays and film screenings in prisons in New York and California. Each performance or screening is followed by an intimate Q&A with the artists, both free and incarcerated. We also have productions of plays outside of prison that engage free audiences with our carceral system. We have panels at festivals with our partners and participants.
“All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”
- James Baldwin, The Harlem Ghetto
Our Programs
The Film Series
This program brings important and entertaining films into prisons, giving access to great works of cinema to those that wouldn’t otherwise have it. The series not only recognizes the epidemic of the American Prison System, but the power of the entertainment industry.
We are working with New York and California prisons to create a prestigious film series. Each screening is followed by an intimate Q&A between the audience and members of the film team (Directors, Producers, Actors, etc.) about the arts and the power of good storytelling. Our goal, along with bringing art and entertainment to prisons, is to change not only who gets to tell what stories and why, but who stories are told for.
The Theater Project
Education: We will bring industry titans into prisons in New York and California to lead theater fellowships. This will include playwrights Stephen Adly Guirgis and Stephen Belber teaching writing workshops, actors Richard Cabral and others leading acting classes and LAByrinth members workshopping their plays.
Performances: This program brings the power of theater to prisons in New York and LA. We will show performances of touring Broadway and off-Broadway plays in our participating prisons. Every performance is followed by an intimate and honest Q&A between the audience and the performers about trauma and the arts.
The Festival Panels
While this program allows new, overlooked audiences to see the films and plays we love, we also hope that it allows our colleagues in the industry to recognize the storytellers we never get to see.
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The panels are a mix of those formerly and currently incarcerated (where technology and furloughs allow) and the filmmakers, writers, directors and actors whose movies and shows have been a part of this series. This crossover promises social and industry change around how we view our carceral system and those most affected by it.
About Us
This program started out of a desire to connect two worlds. Our founder, Madison O’Leary, worked as a trauma and abuse counselor in prisons before going into film as a producer for indie docs. Now, as a studio executive, she hopes to use the power and platform of the entertainment industry to highlight the inhumanity of the American carceral system.
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We have been able to assemble an amazing ensemble of “natural born world-shakers” who want to dismantle the system as we know it and create something truly based in rehabilitation rather than punishment.
This initiative aims to provide access to the arts for those incarcerated and bring awareness to those in the entertainment industry.
Our lineup
