The Cage

San Francisco, CA: Cage Productions Company, 1970. First Edition. Softcover octavo, side-stapled with pictorial B&W paper wrappers, 63 pp. Very good, light wear, creasing and rubbing to perimeter aspects of cover wrappers, light soiling and discoloration around edges of cover wrappers and on back wrappers along side-stapled spine, 'Doylestown peace force' blue ink stamp on top right corner of title page. Inspired by The Actor's Workshop visit to San Quentin in 1958 with a performance of "Waiting for Godot", Cluchey and fellow inmates founded The San Quentin Drama Workshop and Theater within the prison. His dedication to drama generated authorship and in 1964-5 he penned The Cage (originally titled 'Le Cage' and set in France), which premiered in 1965 without the author in attendance. When he was released from San Quentin, he continued staging productions of the play, mainly as fundraisers for The Seventh Step Foundation, a self-help organization for which he was the National Director. And through these performances and with the support and participation of fellow inmates who worked their way through San Quentin in the Drama Workshop, formed the Barbwire Theater on the outside. Eventually the theater branched out into a press, and in the end, is responsible for the printing of this copy of The Cage, about a decade after the formation of the first theater within the bars of San Quentin. This copy is signed by the author on the inside of the cover in black ink, 1971.