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RESOLANA's Beginnings The seeds of RESOLANA were sown in 2003 when friends invited Bette Buschow - who had never set foot in a prison - to attend a graduation ceremony for women inmates involved in an Austin-based program called Truth Be Told. Meeting the inmates and hearing their stories changed her life. Soon Bette was coordinating regular caravans from the Dallas-Fort Worth area to Lockhart Prison, near Austin, introducing every friend she could recruit to the powerful experience of the prison graduations. The first of those friends was Lila Morisee. Before long a growing network of Dallas volunteers, most of whom were artists, were leading creativity workshops for the Lockhart women as part of Truth Be Told. A few volunteers, like Lila, even managed to do weekly classes. Working with Truth Be Told and with the Lockhart women was inspiring and rewarding. Eventually, however, the steady long-distance commute became unsustainable and, with Truth Be Told's blessing, Bette and Lila sought a way to continue to work with incarcerated women closer to home. Perhaps the most unusual fruit of the creative interaction between Dallas artists and Lockhart inmates was a play celebrating the work of Truth Be Told. Written by Victoria Loe Hicks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The Dallas Morning News, and directed by Tina Parker, co-artistic director of Kitchen Dog Theater, the play was produced by ArtSpirit and Today Marks the Beginning. It was staged at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary Theater in Dallas in July 2005. The production attracted standing-room-only crowds for each of its three performances and inspired animated audience discussions in the talkback sessions. In the fall of 2005, a woman who had attended the play connected Bette to HOPE Literacy, an expanding program at the local state jail, and the next chapter of the story began to unfold . . . See Dawson/ Hope   Truth Be Told actresses   Poster Art by Karen Blessen RESOLANA  -  PO Box #225175  -  Dallas, Texas 75222  -  USA