When she teaches her students how to write a song, musician Scarlet Keys says they need to ask themselves certain questions.

What is the thing that keeps you up at night? What's the thing you can't stop thinking about?

As songwriters, we are repurposing human tropes and a new viewpoint with new words with new music.

The people and technology behind the soundtracks of our lives. That's on the Ted

Radio Hour podcast from NPR. Hi, it's Jen, and you're listening to the 1A podcast. The Academy Awards

are set for Sunday evenings, so we're revisiting one of our conversations with one of this

year's nominees. Sing Sing is nominated for three Oscars, including Best Actor in a Leading

Role for Coleman Domingo and Best Adapted Screenplay. Actor Coleman Domingo set down with

1A, as well as the film's executive producer John Divine G. Whitfield and co-producer

Brent Buell. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.

Thank you, Sir Brent Buell. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show. How do you tie together the stories of ancient Egypt, Robin Hood, Freddie Kruger, and

Hamlet on a single stage? Well, through time travel, of course, but also with the minds and talent

of a group of actors at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York.

That play, titled Breaking the Mummy's Code,

was made possible through a program called RTA,

Rehabilitation Through the Arts.

RTA's story is now on the big screen in the film Sing Sing. We hear

become human again and enjoy the things that is not in our reality. The program was born in

1996 after a group of incarcerated men at Sing Sing put on a few theater productions.

They decided they wanted those

productions to be something more, an organized group that could bring the power of theater to people

inside prisons. Playwright and award-winning actor Coleman Domingo stars his founding member John Divine G. Whitfield

...