. >> professor laura bates from indiana state university has been volunteering in prisons for more than founded a unique program called "shakespeare in the shu." >> we chose "macbeth" as our main text for a lot of important reasons. the idea of looking at the choices that this character makes, someone who is in aristotle's terms a tragic hero. he's a noble man, an honorable man, a good man who made bad choices. >> i'm in prison for murder. um, i got 60 years for murder. >> i will say for whiskey, to recruit these gutter tramps. they ain't trained and they are going against this valued general. what i'm saying is, that's risky, right? >> everything he's doing from the beginning to the end of this play is risky. once he decided to take that turn to go back, he got so much to lose, you know what i'm saying? so he's risking everything from that point on. yeah, he's taking risks. >> for every action, there's a reaction. so i can relate to "macbeth" by the choices he made, you know, taking his punishment, no matter how much he tried to go in and around it to fix it, it just got worse and wors