In a Greek jail, inmates find freedom in theater

On a stifling summer evening, the actors took to the stage: a grassy courtyard enclosed by towering prison walls, topped with barbed wire and lit by a floodlight.

The performers were inmates at Greece's maximum-security jail, and so was the audience. The play - ancient Greek tragedy 'Antigone', a story about free will, disobedience and authority - spoke to their hearts. For a short hour, they felt free.

Dressed in cream-coloured costumes, the men, aged between 24 and 63, had been practicing for this moment for months.

"Tomorrow is not a dead-end," they shouted in chorus as they took a bow, hand in hand, in the final act.

For two dozen inmates, the theatre workshop at Korydallos Prison, a sprawling complex in an impoverished part of Athens, had been a respite from the mundane and often gruelling routine of daily prison life and their crammed, rowdy cells....