The cast of 13 men took the setbacks in stride, as people in prison learn to do with most things. Along with a professional actress, Kate Kenney, who played the role of Cyrano’s love interest, Roxane, the crew worked every week through the winter and spring to get the show into shape.

“We just sat in chairs and read the script,” said Mr. Scatamacchia, who is 63 and retired from the music-publishing industry. “‘What are you saying here?’ ‘What does this mean?’ I encouraged them to rewrite their dialogue in modern jargon. These guys are just talking to each other.” Both performances — one for the inmates and another for about 100 outsiders — were well received, despite the periodic interruption of a prison guard’s walkie-talkie. It wasn’t hard to imagine that some of the men were being applauded for the first time in their lives.

The program, which has about 400 alumni who were released from prison, is popular among both inmates and New York’s prison administrators, who have seen its philosophy pay off. Studies of prison-arts programs around the country, including R.T.A., have found that their participants are better behaved than other inmates, earned educational degrees earlier and in some cases are less likely to wind up back behind bars after release — all of which suggests that rehabilitation, which has recently begun to regain traction as a penal philosophy after decades of neglect, is a real and achievable goal.

R.T.A.’s productions aren’t meant to carry any deeper meaning, but in the case of “Cyrano” — about a man who must hide his true, uglier visage behind a more attractive face — it was difficult not to think about the inmates’ own predicament. Ms. Kenney said she thought many of her castmates “identified with the Cyrano character as someone who has so much to offer, all these talents and gifts — this sensitive, unique human being, but all people see when they look at him is his nose. A lot of them feel all anyone sees when they look at them is ‘inmate.’ I think people were seeing themselves in it.”