Miss Heidi’s Work

The seven members of Heidi Arneson’s Direct Action Workshop are gearing up for the final performance of their self-scripted play, Esta Es Mi Historia, This Is My Story. Arneson, a Minneapolis-based performance artist, is trying to provide a sense of calm before the audience arrives, leading her students through breathing exercises and physical and vocal warm-ups. This would be an unremarkable scene except for one thing: All the participants are inmates at the Ramsey County Correctional Facility in St. Paul.

Most of the men are first-time offenders with minor violations, but some have been in and out of the prison system for years. Many of them are minorities—black, Native American, Hispanic—and almost all of them lower class.

Arneson recently made it her mission to help the disenfranchised. Skeptics may question the value of a yoga-practicing, novel-writing raconteur teaching prisoners how to breathe, but she is too busy running Direct Action to care about the naysayers. For her, the work is as spiritual as it is practical, and everyone—regardless of race, class, or gender—can benefit from it.

Ron Bergee, RCCF program coordinator, says Arneson’s workshop gives inmates the confidence to make eye contact, express themselves clearly in job interviews, and—here’s the ineffable quality that makes potential donors hesitate—learn more about themselves. The theory, Arneson and Bergee say, is this: If the men can understand where they came from, they can make smarter choices about where they want to go. A lot of the guys enter prison feeling as though they don’t have options. They have low self-esteem. They act tough while inwardly feeling ashamed and terrified. A one-year prison sentence may keep them off the streets for a while, but the system more often than not dumps them right back where they came from, with no quantifiable life skills, no job prospects, and no way out. By improving their self-esteem and confidence, the men have a better chance of staying off the streets, getting and keeping a job, and, ultimately, contributing positively to society.

Arneson got the idea for Direct Action in 2004. “I’ve been teaching [performance and writing workshops] on the outside for twelve years, and it’s powerful medicine,” she says. “I wanted to bring it to the people who need it most.” She then approached Joe Selvaggio, founder of Project for Pride in Living, an organization that helps low-income individuals find jobs and affordable housing. He had taken Arneson’s class a few years before  at Patrick’s Cabaret and loved it. When she asked him if he would help her get start-up funding for Direct Action, he agreed and raised about $2,500 for the project—enough to get the project off the ground. “Most of the people who give me money are conservative Republicans who value work,” says Selvaggio. “I thought [Direct Action] would be a great thing to build confidence in a job interview.”

While Arneson knows Direct Action has practical applications, she’s still grappling with articulating those goals—the importance of which is not lost on Selvaggio, who says, “I hope she’s keeping track of [how many students get jobs], because if she wants money from me and my people, she needs to keep track of it. If you’re going to go to rich people and corporations, they need to see results.”