The Buddha said, "I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering."

The end of suffering is something Keith Freeman — a former drug dealer, convict, alcoholic and crack addict — has been after for decades.

And after taking part in an intense, five-month program at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts that connected former prisoners and homeless veterans with ancient Buddhist artwork, Freeman thinks he may have taken a step closer to enlightenment.

On Thursday, the group will begin a run of 15 performances in the Pulitzer's galleries — rookie actors speaking scripts culled from their own group sessions as they wrestled with Buddhist truths and their own demons.

Freeman grew up in Madison. His father was absent and his mother was often sick, so he raised his four younger brothers and sisters. But by the time he was 15, he had quit school, fallen in with the wrong crowd and was stealing from freight trains. By 17, he was locked up in the state penitentiary for a year. Before he was 30, he returned to prison, this time for selling drugs.

Freeman, who today is a youthful-looking, lanky 50-year-old with a thin mustache and salt-and-pepper cornrows, spent the next two decades in what he now can identify as a state of trishna, or craving for sense-pleasures. Trishna is one of Buddhism's Noble Truths, and the source of all suffering, the source of self-annihilation.

"It was a battle between living and wanting," Freeman said. "I fought that battle for a long time."

Last year, he entered an outpatient drug program at St. Patrick Center in downtown St. Louis. In the fall, caseworkers chose Freeman and 16 others who had auditioned for the Pulitzer's "Staging Reflections of the Buddha" program. A similar program in 2009, "Staging Old Masters," saw former drug addicts rapping in front of works by Tintoretto, Vignon and Vaccaro. It was a hit, and the Pulitzer decided to replicate the program with Buddhist art.

Caseworkers chose the original pool of actors for their willingness to open themselves up to something new, and to experience the vulnerability that comes with acting, said Emily Piro, who coordinated the "Staging" project for St. Patrick.

Emily Pulitzer, founder and director of the Pulitzer Foundation, said the project was conceived to "build bridges between audiences and art, and between parts of the community." The goal was to teach the participants "how to articulate ideas, and how to trust," she said.

FROM IMPROV TO SCRIPTS

 

Most of the participants are St. Patrick clients, but a few are veterans of St. Louis-based Prison Performing Arts. Since October, the actors, led by Prison Performing Arts founder Agnes Wilcox, have worked among the artworks in the Pulitzer Foundation's current show. The "Reflections of the Buddha" exhibit includes 22 Buddhist pieces, some from the 2nd century, created in Afghanistan, China, India, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan and Tibet.

In the galleries and classrooms at the Pulitzer, the actors meditated and wrote haikus. Wilcox led them in game-playing and improv exercises, all with a twofold purpose. The games foster teamwork and communication skills necessary for the actors to be successful citizens outside the program. The Pulitzer also partnered with the Employment Connection, a St. Louis nonprofit group that helped the actors with résumés and other job-finding skills.

But the improv also led to the scripts the actors will begin performing for the public this week. During a recent improv session, Wilcox led the group in games involving the Buddhist works, as other "Staging" staff sat nearby furiously taking down the actors' thoughts on laptops.

Wilcox guided them through the art in a way that let them confront their own problems while engaging a world they knew nothing about.

Over the months, many of the Christian and Muslim actors heard 2,500-year-old Buddhist philosophies for the first time. Along the way, social workers tracked the sessions and met with the group separately to connect the dots between the art and the actors' lives.

The notes created during the improv games were then filtered back to Wilcox and her writing partner, Maggie Ginestra, who weaved them into scripts. After the scripts were reviewed for accuracy, the actors received them and memorized their lines.

ANOTHER'S PERSPECTIVE

 

During the performances the actors and audience move from artwork to artwork — a dynamic Emily Pulitzer likens to a Passion Play. As they lead an audience around the Pulitzer's galleries, the actors will recite lines originally spoken by their colleagues in the improv sessions as they contemplated the pieces.

"We've deputized these actors to guide our audience through the art," said Lisa Harper Chang, the Pulitzer Foundation's manager of community engagement.

The performance itself "forces those who come ... to see the art from someone else's perspective," said Kristina Van Dyke, director of the Pulitzer Foundation. It's a "perspective they might not have heard before, and it forces them to see" former prisoners and homeless veterans in a different light.

One of the actors' favorite pieces from the exhibit was "Standing Prince Shōtoku at Age Two," a 2-foot-tall cypress statue carved in the 11th century that depicts one of Japan's earliest followers and patrons of Buddhism, the 6th-century imperial prince regent Shotoku Taishi Nisaizo.

The prince, whose inlaid rock-crystal eyes are cast down toward Earth, holds his hands together in prayer. He is reciting the name of the Buddha of Immeasurable Light, Amitabha, who presides over a pure Buddha realm called the "Land of Bliss." According to tradition, Amitabha brings anyone to his realm who wishes to be reborn there, and helps the person attain enlightenment.

Prince Shotoku was a favorite of the "Staging" group because he is hollow, and filled with devotional items: semiprecious stones, miniature statues, Buddhist scriptures, Sanskrit hymns.

In a Pulitzer classroom on a recent afternoon, Wilcox, a pixie-like blur of theatrical energy, with short gray hair and big round glasses, asked the group to describe two wishes they'd like to put into Prince Shotoku.

She placed a laundry basket in the middle of the circle of chairs where the actors were sitting. "Put your wish in the basket," she said. "Profound or not profound. Something you'd wish for soon."

One by one the actors got up and dropped a wish into the laundry basket.

"My mother's health."

"A job with better benefits."

"Acceptance from my children."

"For my cancer to go into remission."

"To be able to give back."

"Letting go."

'PEACE OF MIND'

 

Allen Wilson, 48, who lives in St. Louis and is a client at St. Patrick Center, said in an interview that he wasn't sure what to think of the program at first.

"But as I came to understand what it was about, I've learned a lot about myself, the character in myself," Wilson said. "It gives you peace of mind when you can go to a different level and get a better awareness of yourself."

Christopher Fan, an intern with the "Staging" program from Washington University's Brown School of Social Work and a practicing Buddhist, said the actors had soaked up difficult Buddhist ideas. "In 12 weeks, they've gained more insight than I have in my 21 years as a Zen Buddhist," Fan said.

For Freeman, being exposed to Buddhism challenged him to worry less about the future. "It's about knowing not to give power to your burdens," he said. "When you do, it takes away from your soul."

Instead, he said, he's going to concentrate on his writing. He's got three screenplays — first a children's movie, then a remake of a classic, then a thriller — already planned out in his head.

Freeman said the combination of Buddhist philosophy and acting had taught him something about how he'd like to conduct the rest of his life.

"Put on my game face, stay in character and look forward," he said. "Backwards is not an option."