Theatre Today: Where Can You Find It?

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(Above) The director of Howard Brenton’s Romans in Britain was hauled into Old Bailey — the venerable British court — when the play fi rst opened at England’s National Theatre in 1980. He was accused of creating an act of “gross indecency” when actors simulated the rape of a naked Celt male by a naked Roman soldier during the Roman occupation — two thousand years previously. The director (Michael Bogdanov) won his case, but Brenton’s powerful play, which draws parallels with modern-day English rule in Northern Ireland, still sparks furious controversy. This Sheffi eld, England, revival in 2006, with its luxuriously verdant setting by Ralph Koltai, may suggest an even deeper parallel that the author did not consider: the rape of the natural planet by civilization. Samuel West directed. (Left) One of the most gripping contemporary plays about urban British violence is Mark Ravenhill’s shockingly titled Shopping and Fucking. Andrew Clover is the besieged actor in the original London production, at the Royal Court Theatre, in 1996. What’s Happening? 273
� A Theatre of Community Although most of the theatre discussed and pictured in this book was created by trained professional artists, we must never forget that theatre’s origins are located in performances created not by theatre professionals but by social communities — religious and ethnic — whose works were intended not for the entertainment of spectators but for the benefi t, and often the rapture, of their own participants. The African dancedrama, the Egyptian resurrection plays, the Greek dithyrambs, and the medieval Quem Queritis trope were basically celebrations of their societies’ cultures, and their performers were the primary celebrants. Such theatres — whose works are created not only for a community but by it — continue today. They eventually may attract audiences, attain box-offi ce income, and pay professional salaries, but they are primarily expressions, celebrations, and sometimes critiques of the cultures of their creators. In America, such groups have existed in tribal Native American cultures since before the landing of Columbus. In twentieth-century America, several “workers’ theatres” in the 1930s created theatre pieces by and for the American worker. The most famous, Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty, was produced in 1935 by the Group Theatre, which became one of the country’s fi rst prominent theatre ensembles dedicated to social causes. Other focused theatre ensembles followed, many devoted not merely to creating theatre works by and for members of their community but also to touring their productions to localities previously unserved by the theatre at all, including Luis Valdez’s El Teatro Campesino (the “farmworkers’ theatre,” mentioned earlier) and the Free Southern Theatre founded in New Orleans by African American playwright John O’Neal in 1965. Unique in this movement, however, is the Cornerstone Theater, founded in 1986 by Harvard graduates Bill Rauch and Alison Carey. The Cornerstone’s goal has been to engage with local cultural groups in creating new theatrical works (often based on classic dramas) adapted to each group’s interests, fears, and aspirations. These works are then performed — by the merged Cornerstone and community groups — within the community, usually on a free or pay-what-youcan basis. The response is usually electric: not only are these works heralded as absorbing and entertaining, but they initiate new cultural discourse and even social change in almost every community where they have been engaged. Examples of Cornerstone’s work are as varied as American culture itself, as, for example, 274 Chapter 11 | Theatre Today Bill Rauch (pointing) and costume designer Shigeru Yaji (left, with glasses) show the community actors a model of the scenery at the fi rst rehearsal of Waking Up in Lost Hills: A Central California Rip Van Winkle, Cornerstone’s 2004 theatre project in the Lost Hills farming village in California’s Central Valley. � � � � � Tartoof: Molière’s Tartuffe, adapted to portray a disintegrating farm family with a cast and crew of fi fty-fi ve Kansans; performed in Norcatur, Kansas (population 215). Three Sisters from West Virginia: Chekhov’s play, set in a contemporary Rust Belt city and focusing on Appalachian out-migration; performed in the basement of city hall in Montgomery, West Virginia (population 3,104). Romeo & Juliet: performed by a racially integrated cast in Port Gibson, Mississippi (population 2,371). The House on Walker River: an adaptation of Aes chylus’s trilogy The Oresteia, staged on an Indian reservation in Schurz, Nevada (population 325). Steelbound: adapted from Aeschylus’s tragedy Prometheus Bound, featuring steelworkers at a defunct
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Theatre Today: Where Can You Find It?

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