Colman Domingo Leads a Theater Troupe of Inmates in A24’s ‘Sing Sing’ Trailer
Colman Domingo uses the performing arts to connect with fellow inmates in the first trailer for the A24 drama Sing Sing.
Director Greg Kwedar’s feature is set to hit theaters in July after premiering at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Sing Sing focuses on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program that allows prisoners at New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility to produce and act in their own stage projects. The movie stars Domingo and Paul Raci alongside a cast comprised mostly of formerly incarcerated actors, many of whom previously participated in RTA.
Sing Sing follows the real-life friendship between inmates John “Divine G” Whitfield (Domingo) and Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, who plays himself, as the group works to put together an original production entitled Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code. The movie is based on author John H. Richardson’s 2005 Esquire article “The Sing Sing Follies” and the stage production of Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code, which was written by the program’s theater director Brent Buell and was performed at Sing Sing in 2005.
“It’s been a program that was established to help people get more in touch with their feelings and truly get some rehabilitation,” Domingo says about RTA in the trailer. “And it’s turned into something, I don’t know, wonderful.”
Kwedar directed from a script that he co-wrote alongside Clint Bentley, with Whitfield and Maclin credited for their work on the story. Kwedar, Bentley and Monique Walton serve as producers.
In her review for The Hollywood Reporter, critic Lovia Gyarkye wrote that the film’s “sensitive approach to portraying the lives of its characters makes it an urgent document of our time.”
During an interview with THR ahead of TIFF, Domingo — a current Oscar nominee for Netflix’s Rustin who is set to play patriarch Joe Jackson in Lionsgate’s 2025 Michael Jackson biopic — credited his Sing Sing co-stars for helping his own performance be “the most open and raw that I’ve ever been. You can’t lie. You can’t lie with these guys.”
