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“Echoes of a Caged Soul,” a live performance about women who served time in prison, written and performed by former prisoner Pamela Thomas, and “Voices in Time,” an exhibit resembling a prison cell, with a bed, toilet and boxes of writings and personal belongings, will be featured Thursday, March 6, at Northwestern University School of Law.

The performance of “Echoes of a Caged Soul,” by Thomas, three other women and two musicians, (at 6 p.m.) and the exhibit, “Voices in Time,” (from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.) will be in the School of Law’s Thorne Auditorium, 375 East Chicago Ave.

Sponsored by Northwestern University School of Law’s Children and Family Justice Center, the performance and exhibit are free and open to the public.

In the performance, Thomas, 36, who served three separate terms in Illinois state prisons, will expose life behind bars as seen by women who have experienced it first hand. Currently 163,102 women are in prison in the U.S., with 2,935 in Illinois. Approximately 82 percent are mothers, which affects the lives of 25,000 children.

Designed by Salome Chasnoff and Sung Youn Lim, “Voices in Time” also features three monitors inside the exhibition that feature interviews with 10 formerly imprisoned women.

The “Voices in Time” project evolved from a media activism workshop led by Beyondmedia, with 42 former prisoners at Grace House, in partnership with Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers. The women produced an award-wining video, “What We Leave Behind,” and a book that is in progress will pair academic articles with first-person narratives from women prisoners.

“Voices in Time” is funded in part by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation for Public Scholarship, Funding Exchange and Crossroads Fund.

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